


Valley of the Moon

by batter



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Blatant anachronisms, Brian David Gilbert: Horse Whisperer, Cowboys, Debatably Slow Burn, Ensemble Cast, Homoerotic Horse Taming, M/M, RPF, Spaghetti Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2020-11-23 20:43:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 31,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20895824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batter/pseuds/batter
Summary: Pat Gill rides into town with a dark past biting at his heels, and nothing but problems ahead. He can't afford to cause trouble here.He didn't necessarily count on trouble finding him.





	1. Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> howdy y'all! welcome to the incredibly self-indulgent spaghetti western au. my main research qualifications are 1) watching angsty old cowboy miniseries and 2) living in a desert so you'll excuse the historical inaccuracies. 
> 
> content warnings: no explicit period-typical homophobia, but also, the cowboys are Not Woke. there's some internalized shame and repression, for sure. there's a throwaway reference to something that may have been considered underage/dubcon in the past, but it's not really in the fic itself. also period typical guns-and-violence, though that's not in this chapter so much. the next part has some more heavy stuff, but i'll warn at the beginning of that chapter for specifics. 
> 
> as per rpf-etiquette, if you are or know the likenesses of the individuals portrayed in this fic, run, run and never return.

The sun is hanging hot and heavy over Pat’s head by the time he finally catches sight of the little town in the distance. He pulls Charlie’s reins, pauses them both a moment to take the place in.

Like most good places, it’s not on any map, so he’d had to rely on the kindness of the folks in the next town over who’d pointed him down an unmarked trail, rough and winding, with only faded cart tracks to guide him. It hadn’t been a long ride, two days at the most, but he’d set an unrelenting, unforgiving pace across the Texas desert, and it had been rough on him and Charlie both. He pulls the brim of his hat down further over his forehead, rubs the bandana around his throat through the sweat pooled on the back of his neck, already soaked though it is. He’s been travelling since nearly dawn this morning, neither a cloud nor tree in sight, and pure relief sags his shoulders, pushes him on eagerly towards shade, and water, and a hot meal if he can wrangle one. Charlie seems to sense that they’re at the end of their journey as well, trotting along with new vigor when Pat nudges him forwards.

He doesn’t know if the town has a name for itself; most folks nearby just call it the McElroys’ place, but that was supposed to be on account of the sheriff and his family being the ones who watched out for it. There’s no particular signage to suggest anything otherwise as he hits main street; just a couple kids kicking a bucket around that stop to gawk at him as he rides by.

He passes by a few ragged, sun-worn storefronts – a general store, a little clinic, a clothes shop judging by the mannequins in the window, and what seems to be a blacksmith. There are houses too, rickety wooden things with creaking wooden porches, dogs laying in the shade panting beside their masters, men leaned up against railings smoking leisurely, women doing needlework with heat-slow fingers. They all watch him with a wary interest, and he’s caught between sitting up straighter, tipping his hat and calling _ afternoon _to every person he passes like a respectable young man, and curling in on himself, avoiding their eyes and urging Charlie on faster. He tucks his head to his chest, keeps his hat low, nods curtly at the few folks who call out to him. Small towns like this rarely let people keep their secrets to themselves for long, but most people respect the look of a man clearly meaning to mind his own business.

He can see saloon doors up ahead, and a corral with a couple small pens attached loosely to a stable, but he doesn’t see any ranch house nearby, no sign of cattle either, so he supposes it must mostly service the saloon. He dismounts in front of the saloon, and his feet have hardly touched the ground before a woman comes veritably flying out of the front doors, striding right towards him. She’s dressed for riding, thick brown trousers and dust-covered boots, smart black suspenders on over her smart white shirt, and her long dark hair’s pulled up into a smart bun, tight atop her head. Hatless, she’s squinting against the insistent afternoon sun in her eyes, but she still smiles widely as she hops down the wooden steps towards him.

Pat’s Pa, he’s sure, would think she was dressed very improperly. Pat thinks she’s dressed very properly indeed for how well she handles Charlie, immediately taking his lead from Pat and helping him to unclip his saddle bags and start pulling the heavy tack off of Charlie’s back.

“Howdy,” she says as she works, “you here for business or pleasure?” Her tone’s light, but there’s a pointedness to the question, a reflection of the same wariness in the eyes of the rest of the townsfolk. It’s a strong, healthy suspicion of the strange and new that Pat can appreciate. Word is that the McElroys don’t broker trouble in their town, but that doesn’t mean people won’t try.

“I’m passing through, trying to track down a friend of mine,” Pat tells her honestly, as he pulls Charlie’s saddle down, running a free hand across his broad flank. “I’ve just come down from Henrietta, though, so I’ll probably stay a few nights before moving on.”

The woman appraises him with new interest. “Henrietta? That’s quite a ride.” She reaches for the saddle in his hands, and he hands it over, unthinking. He blinks, mildly impressed, as she hefts it up on her shoulder with apparent ease. She holds out her unencumbered arm, hand outstretched. “Simone de Rochefort,” she declares. “I manage the stable, and help out inside if Jenna needs a spare set of hands.”

_ Ah, _ Pat thinks, _ makes sense. _Simone’s accent is sharply northern, rolling over her own name smoothly, and she carries herself with the same unabashed pride of every French trapper Pat’s ever known.

He takes her hand, shakes it once, firmly. “Pat,” he replies simply. His name and face have no particular reason to have made it this far south, but he’s not going to invite trouble by giving out more than’s asked for.

Simone nods. “Well, Pat, looks like you could use a meal in you, and no offense friend, but a bath wouldn’t hurt either. If you want to head on in, I’m sure Jenna can get you fed and watered, and I can do the same for your ride, here.” There’s an eyebrow raised, an, _ assuming you can pay for it, of course, _unspoken. Pat just nods, hefts his bags higher on his shoulder. 

“I’ll do that,” he says. “Much obliged, ma’am.”

Simone grins, wolfish. “Don’t _ ma’am _me, Pat. I’ll be seeing you.”

He pulls his hat off as soon as he’s inside, tucks it to his chest as he blinks into the sudden dimness of the room. It’s not crowded, on account of it being late in the afternoon, well past lunch but not quite dark enough that anyone’s showed up to wait on dinner yet. There are some folks milling around though, a quiet card game going on in one corner, nearby a beat-up looking piano. One of the players, a man Pat’s age with cropped hair and thin spectacles on his nose, stands as Pat enters, excusing himself from the game silently with a hand on a woman’s shoulder. He brushes past Pat roughly on his way out, eyes him with a wide, openly curious look, but doesn’t stop to say anything.

Pat’s quickly distracted by the woman at the bar – Jenna, he supposes – calling over to him with a wave. “Hey, stranger! What can I do you for?” She holds herself with the same brusque, no-nonsense manner of most bartenders, but half her hair’s shaved close, some trendy crop from back east, and she’s got bright, rosy cheeks and a bright, open smile that puts Pat right at ease.

He weaves between empty tables, approaching the bar. “I’ll need to board myself and my horse for a few days, if you’ve got the space,” he says, rummaging around in his pack until he comes up with a few dollars’ worth of coins. He drops them onto the bar, figures it should be more than enough to cover his stay, however long it takes him to stock up again before moving on. However long it takes him to find out where it is he’s going.

Jenna’s smile widens, now that money’s on the table. She quickly slides the coins towards her, drops them in her register. “Sure thing! How abouts I get Russ to draw you a bath right now, and I can have some food set out for you when you get down? Looks like you’ve had a pretty rough ride.”

Pat glances down at himself, sheepish. He feels rough after days on the road, sweltering under the open sun and only washing himself off with the dregs from his own waterskins, but if he’s being pushed into a tub near as soon as he sets foot in town, he must be smelling something awful.

Still, a hot bath and fresh clothes sound like about the best thing in the world right now, and he’s too exhausted to be anything but utterly honest. “That sounds wonderful, thank you,” he tells her frankly, and she laughs.

She reaches under the counter, hands him over a heavy brass key. “Go on upstairs,” she urges, “second door on your left. Set your stuff down, I’ll make Russ drag up the tub.”

* * *

Pat spends far too long in the bath, only dragging himself out when he realizes the water’s going cool, and he’s starting to nod off just sitting there, chin dropping onto his chest.

He stretches as he pats himself dry, a contented groan escaping him as the dull ache of his back, his thighs, settles from the long soak into something familiar and comfortable. Jenna’s lackey, Russ, had taken the clothes he’d ridden in on, promising with a small grimace that they’d be returned by tomorrow, so he rummages in his pack for something else to wear. He dresses lighter than he did for riding, thinner canvas trousers, a red and black checked shirt, worn-out grey suspenders. He forgoes a hat or jacket and his growling stomach prevents him from spending too much time on his hair, just pushing it back with his fingers before heading back downstairs.

The saloon’s filled up for dinner, and word has clearly spread, as the low murmur of the room drops silent as soon as Pat descends, all eyes turning to him. He freezes, a little flustered under the attention, but quickly forces himself to soldier on towards the bar. He’s not here to cause any trouble, so they can watch him all they like.

Jenna presses a shallow bowl of stew into his hands as soon as he approaches, still hot, and he smiles gratefully at her as he takes it.

As soon as he turns to look for a seat, he’s drawn back towards the table in the corner. The man from before has returned, the game resumed, with one new player. The familial resemblance is immediately apparent – something around the eyes, or the mouth – but this man carries himself larger than his brother, with a jovial smile and an easy confidence. A glance down at his vest confirms what Pat already suspected: a sheriff's badge, gleaming in the low light.

He catches Pat’s eyes quickly, gestures towards a seat at his table, conspicuously empty. “Hey, friend,” he calls. “Have a seat, let’s talk.”

His tone is all smiles, but Pat knows it’s not a suggestion. “Yessir,” he says, making his way over and setting himself down in quick order.

“What’s your name, friend?” The Sheriff asks, not beating around the bush.

“Pat Gill,” he responds, though he doesn’t volunteer anything else. The rest of the table’s still eating, some of them scraping the bottom of their bowls with their spoons, so Pat takes his cue and shoves a spoonful in his mouth. It’s damn good stew, meaty and salty and thick, but at this point, he thinks gruel would taste like ambrosia, provided it was hot enough.

“Can’t say I know your name, Pat Gill,” says the Sheriff, one eyebrow raised.

Pat feels a mild twinge of relief. Word certainly hasn’t traveled this far then, even among men of the law. If there are even stories travelling about Pat at all. “Can’t say I’m surprised, sir,” he replies, once he’s swallowed, “seeing as I never made one for myself.”

The Sheriff laughs, then, hearty and genuine, and reaches across the table to shake Pat’s hand. “Justin McElroy,” he says, then nods to the man from before. “This here’s my brother, Griffin, and we’ve got another one, Travis, but he begged off tonight. I’m the lawman, but we all look after the place, you know? Our Pa, too, but he’s mostly sat around on porches telling tall tales to the grand-kids, these days.” Pat nods as politely as he can manage, receives a terse, but not altogether unkind smile from Griffin. 

Justin McElroy is all thick drawl, as Virginian as they come, and Clint McElroy – so Pat’s heard – had been a lawman too, a real ranger type, before the whole family struck out westwards. They’ve got a good reputation, which around here, is a very good thing to have. They care for their town, their families, their people, and Pat believes that, watching Justin now, leaned back in his chair and surveying the bar like a lion watching over his pride. The town is close-knit, that much is clear, protective and wary of people like Pat, riding in with guns and secrets and troubles following close behind like a shadow. Pat understands this all, respects it.

It does not make this little interrogation any less uncomfortable for him.

“Where you from, Pat Gill?” Justin asks, as beside him, Griffin lays down a card. The game hasn’t paused, continues to go on around them, but Pat would bet it’s just a set piece, the backdrop to the far more interesting conversation happening over it. “Simone said you rode in from Henrietta.”

Pat shrugs. No reason to lie about any of this, particularly. “I’m from Maine originally, but I’ve been west near on a decade now. Not really _ from _ anywhere around, I guess. I was just passing through Henrietta on my way here, mostly I go where work takes me.”

“Cattle work?” Justin prompts.

Pat shakes his head. “Sure, sometimes, but I’ll do most anything. Well digging, stablework, bounties. Whatever pays.”

Justin leans forward, abruptly and cheerfully intense. “And what pays around here, Gill?”

Pat sighs, shoveling another spoonful into his mouth before answering. He’d thought to get a good night’s rest before asking around town, but as long as he’s got the sheriff right in front of him…

He swallows. “Not here for work. I’m trying to track down a friend of mine, this is the last place I heard he was headed towards. I was hoping someone here might know what direction he went when he left.”

The other players perk up, and the game stalls as they stop trying to hide their interest. Justin’s smile is intrigued. “Yeah? Why don’t you tell me about your friend, and we’ll see if we don’t have some answers for you.”

Pat thinks for a moment, starts haltingly. “He’s… not much to notice, I suppose. Light brown hair, keeps it short. Usually has a beard. Tall, taller than me, travels light. Rides a white filly, or did last I saw him. Would’ve called himself Clay, if he gave a name.”

Pat’s been trying not to get his hopes up, trying not to pin everything on this town, but he feels his heart jump, all nerves and excitement, when Justin’s expression immediately goes thoughtful, and he says, “Yeah, I reckon that rings a few bells. Hang on-” He leans out, towards the bar, calling, “Hey, Jenna! Jen!”

Jenna pauses where she was wiping off the bar surface. “Yeah, boss?”

“You remember Clay? Real odd, quiet fella, rode through here last week?”

Jenna makes a face. “Sure I do. Cleaned off every plate I gave him, and then some. I did not know one man could eat so much bread, genuinely.”

Pat snorts quietly. Sounds about right.

“You find out where he was headed?” Justin asks.

Jenna frowns, then shakes her head. “Naw, he left in a real hurry. Travis reshod his horse, though, so he might know.”

Justin nods, thanks her for her trouble. When he turns back to Pat, he’s got a new look on his face, contemplative in a way that makes Pat shift uncomfortably.

“Now that I think about it,” Justin says calmly, “he did leave in a real hurry. What with you tracking him down like you are, I don’t suppose he’s in some sort of trouble?”  
  
_ “No!” _ Pat says, too surprised to remember to be circumspect. Takes a breath, stares down at his plate, avoid’s Justin’s eyes. “No,” he repeats eventually, more calmly. “We’ve worked together for a couple years now, but we split up after our last job, and I lost track of him. We were supposed to be heading south, so I’m just trying to catch up with him before he hits the border.” Not wholly a truth, but not precisely a lie either. Just enough to make sense, without sounding purposefully vague. At least, Pat sure hopes so.

Justin seems to accept it, at least, giving him a short nod and leaning back once more. “Well, alright then, Gill. Trav’s our resident blacksmith, so he’ll be up bright and early tomorrow, down near the clinic.” Justin pushes his chair back, heaving himself upwards with a heavy sigh. “I’m calling it a night, y’all, Syd will have my hide if I don’t help put the little ones down,” he says to the table at large. Then, to Pat, “Good luck with your friend, Gill.”

“Thank you, sir,” Pat replies, surprised to find that he means it.

Justin claps a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Call me Justin, friend. Night, Griff.”

“Night, Juice,” Griffin says absently. After a moment, he turns to Pat. Some of the tension seems to have left his shoulders, and there’s the same glint of joviality in his eyes that Pat recognizes from his brother. He holds up the deck of cards in his hand. “Deal you in, Gill?”

* * *

Pat barely remembers to pull off his outer clothes before he hits the bed and falls into a deep, dreamless sleep, but he doesn’t sleep in too late. Long habit of rising with the sun has him blinking awake as soon as light starts to filter through the thin white curtains of his room. He groans, stumbles on aching legs across to the small basin by the window, and splashes some water onto his face.

The window’s cracked open a bit, the sounds of people below drifting in along with the cool breeze, and for a few moments, Pat braces himself against the windowsill and just closes his eyes to take it in. He doesn’t mind his solitude – far from it – but there’s a _ relief _to being amongst people again, the sounds of conversation and trade and travel going on and on around him.

He finds his clothes clean and folded neatly on the vanity, dropped off at some point this morning by Russ, he supposes. He pulls them on quickly, shrugs on his coat and grabs his hat, and makes his way downstairs. He passes Jenna, still stationed at the bar, wishes her a good morning and thanks her kindly for her hospitality. She’s got breakfast on, beans and bacon and what smells like coffee, but he’s not hungry for just having woken up, so he heads out with the intention of finding Charlie, making sure he’s well cared-for and saddling him up to ride down to the blacksmith.

As soon as he’s out the door, he hops down the creaking wooden stairs onto the road, turns towards the stables, and– 

His breath catches, as he watches a black pinto stallion trying to buck off just about the most beautiful man Pat’s ever seen.

There’s a small crowd hanging off the fence around the corral, and Pat hurries to join them, watching without breathing as the horse thrashes its neck, throws its legs wildly, kicking up massive clouds of the soft dirt at its feet. The rider holds on valiantly; he’s lost his hat at some point, Pat can see it lying crumpled and forlorn some ways away, and his hair, long and golden in the sun, flies up around his face with each buck. He’s not got a coat on, just a thin, sweat-soaked white shirt, and Pat can see that he’s all lean, corded muscle underneath, strong shoulders flexing with the effort of bracing against the force of the mustang’s thrashing.

He’s good, this kid – and he _ is _ a kid, fresh-faced and wild-eyed and pretty and _ whooping _– and for a few, beautiful moments it looks like he’s got the horse going in circles, fit to tire it out, but the beast clearly has a will of its own, and in one spectacular final buck, the kid goes flying, landing hard in the dirt.

Pat winces at the way the kid’s little body _ crumples, _but he rebounds with astounding speed, rolls right onto his feet nearly as soon as he hits the ground and makes for the fence in great, limping gaits, hauling himself right over. 

He hops down beside Pat, chest heaving, hair hanging limp with sweat against his face. He pushes it back with shaking fingers, and from his grin, the wild exhilaration in his eyes, you’d hardly know he’d fallen. He turns to Pat suddenly, and his grin widens. “How about that, huh?” he says breathlessly, “Oh my god! How was _ that?” _

Pat blinks at him, opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, anything stupid like, _ pretty fucking good, _ stupid like, _ that was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, _ stupid like, _ ride me– _

_ “Brian David Gilbert!” _

The kid winces, and Pat turns towards the sound of the voice, spots a woman marching out of the clothes shop across the street with pure fury on her face. She’s got her skirts hiked up around her ankles like an afterthought, seeming not to know or care that they’re still dragging in the dirt in some places, gives up on holding them entirely halfway across the road.

“Doctor McElroy…” the kid starts, but the woman cuts him off sharply with one raised hand. She steps right up into his space, starts ruthlessly poking and prodding at his chest, utterly ignoring his yelps of protest.

“Honestly, Brian,” she says tersely, running fingers methodically across his ribs, “you’ve been at it five days, and he’s bucked you every single one of them. He’s going to break you well before you break him.”

“I’m almost there,” the kid – Brian? – whines, throwing his head back. “There’s this look in his eyes, when I get close to him, like he wants me, like he wants me to do _ better. _I just need more time with him!”

Justin must’ve been watching, maybe on the other side of the corral from Pat, because he wanders over from somewhere, an amused grin on his face. “Hi, Sweetie!” he says to the woman, and then, to Brian, “Almost had the bastard, huh?”

Without looking back, the woman points one finger at Justin. “No, he didn’t. Stop encouraging him.” She steps back, seemingly satisfied with the relative health of her charge. “What you _ need,” _ she tells him, not unkindly, “is to let that horse go and stop letting it nearly kill you three times a day.”

Brian’s got an insolent look on his face, like he intends to do nothing of the sort. Pat is entirely charmed.

“Aw, Sydnee, you don’t have to be so hard on the kid,” Justin says, bemused. Sydnee raises an eyebrow, decidedly less so.

“Hon, as long as he’s the reason our daughter keeps trying to get the dog to buck her off, I’ll be as hard on him as I like.”

As if on cue, from the clothes shop, Pat hears the distant sound of a crash, followed immediately by a child’s squealing laughter.

“Oh, Lord,” Sydnee says, wincing. “Hon,” she says to Justin, “I gotta get back, finish getting the girls’ new stuff taken in.” She pokes him in the chest with one finger, stern and commanding. “Stop. This.”

She whisks herself away as briskly as she came, already calling out across the street, leaving the three of them behind. Justin stares after her a moment, looking thoroughly besotted, but eventually turns a wry smile on Brian, claps him once on the shoulder. “Think that means you’re done for the day, buckaroo.” Brian huffs, looking put-out, but he’s absently rubbing his side in a way that makes Pat think the kid knew he was finished anyways.

“I’ll be getting on, boys,” Justin tells them. “Sheriff business to be done. Mornin’ Pat, Brian.”  
  
“Morning, Justin,” Pat says, waving him off.

By the time Justin’s well out of sight, Brian’s turned his full attention on Pat, seeming to really see him for the first time. “Hope you liked the show,” he says breezily, and he’s got a nice voice, light and musical, and Pat’s about to say, _ reckon I did, reckon I liked it a lot, _but he’s saved by Brian himself, holding his hand out.

“Brian David Gilbert,” he announces.

“I, uh, I know,” Pat replies, jutting his head vaguely across the street, and making Brian wince. He takes his hand, though, shakes it quickly. “Pat Gill.”

“Good to meet you, Pat Gill,” Brian says brightly, and sounds like he means it.

Pat starts to move towards the stables, nodding to suggest that Brian’s free to follow him. He tries not to feel too pleased when he does, trotting along at his side.

“You rode in yesterday afternoon, right?” Brian asks, watching with interest as Pat approaches Charlie’s stall. “Oh, the appaloosa’s yours? He’s beautiful.”

“His name is Charles,” Pat murmurs absently, occupied with opening the gate and patting up Charlie’s forehead, smiling when Charlie presses his head hard against Pat’s palm. Eventually, his mind catches up to the conversation.

“I got in yesterday, yeah. I didn’t see you – you work for Simone?”

Brian shrugs, talking as he moves around Pat and Charlie in the pen, ducking briefly into a tack shed and returning with a coarse brush and a bone-tooth comb, which Pat accepts gratefully. “I live on my family’s ranch just out of town – that’s why you didn’t see me, yesterday. Sometimes a cattle drive moving north will bring in some mustangs, and they’ll let Simone keep ‘em for real cheap, except she can’t get a saddle on them, so she pays me a bit to help break them.”

“I heard my name,” Simone says, hoisting herself over the fence into the pen. “You boys better not be gossiping about me.” As if to make up for her hatlessness yesterday, she’s now wearing two hats, one on top of the other. The one on top is dusty and familiar, and Pat watches with a smile as she makes her way across the pen to deposit it neatly on Brian’s head.

Pat snorts and goes back to combing small knots from Charlie’s mane, listening as Brian informs her, “We’re discussing your inability to break a horse to save your life."

Simone makes an indignant sound, throwing her hands up. “They don’t trust me!”

Pat pauses, glancing up at her over Charlie’s neck. “Horses don’t _ trust _you?”

“No!” she insists. “I have good intentions, but a suspicious face! I try to go up to a horse to, you know, feed it, or adjust its bit, give it a treat, just _ pat _ it, and they spook to high heavens! Meanwhile, _ this _asshole,” she jerks her head towards Brian, now happily perched atop the fence, smiling down at her, “is the one who wants to put fifty pounds of tack on them and himself on top of that, and they’re all falling over themselves to do whatever he wants!” She blinks, then turns back to Brian. “Oh, speaking of, you’d better get that saddle off of your mustang, he’s getting antsy.”

Brian sighs, hopping down from the fence and grumbling, “Well, he doesn’t trust me at _ all. _Maybe you oughta try and work with him, since he’s the opposite of any horse I’ve ever known.”

Simone gapes at him. “Are you joking? That thing near bit half my hand off. Naw, he’s all yours, my friend. You’ll never ride him, though, he just ain’t made for it.”

Without thinking, Pat finds himself saying, “If anyone could ride that horse, it’d be him.”

Brian smiles at him, pleased and small and private in a way that makes Pat’s ears burn. “Well thanks, Pat Gill,” he says, and Pat thinks Brian might be a bit pink around the cheeks. It’s a hot day, though, so it’s difficult to say.

* * *

They end up splitting off, after that, once Pat’s got Charlie all saddled up. Brian’s off back to the corral, to take the saddle off his mustang, which makes Pat a little nervous, but Simone insists he’s the only one that can get close enough. Pat wishes him good luck and sets off at a trot towards the blacksmith.

It’s less of a shop than it is an open workshop, covered by some latticed wood overhead, so the blacksmith sees him coming from a mile away. He’s waiting patiently by the road, wiping off his forehead with a stained towel, when Pat dismounts.

“Travis McElroy?” he asks, somewhat pointlessly, since one look at the man shows there’s no way he could be anyone else. He’s so blatantly related to the other two, it’s nearly painful.

“Yep!” the man confirms anyways, with a wide grin. “Pat Gill? Justin said you’d be dropping by.”

“That’s me,” Pat agrees, shaking Travis’s proffered hand, and– Oh, wow. Nobody Pat’s met recently has had particularly _ smooth _hands, but he’s feeling the need to check his own palm for damage. Smithy work is a hell of a thing.

“Come in, come in, sit!” Travis ushers him into the workshop, navigating easily past heavy equipment and half-finished projects. Pat moves a little more gingerly, eventually following Travis to a small clearing amidst the chaos that seems to be reserved for the man’s attempts at carpentry. There are rough benches and tables scattered around, tools on workstations, all surrounding the clear centerpiece, an intricate, beautifully carved rocking chair. The wood is a gorgeous rich brown, and from the smell of varnish thick in the air, it’s only going to get darker.

Travis catches him admiring, and beams. “For my wife,” he explains, “we’re expecting.”

“Congratulations,” Pat says genuinely. “It’s beautiful.”

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but somehow, Travis’s smile manages to widen. “Thank you!” he says, delighted. “But come on, sit, we’ll talk.”

He points Pat towards a bench, and Pat sits obediently, watching as Travis pulls up a chair across from him, with a short carving knife in one hand, and a block of wood in the other. As he starts to shave the corners from the block, he prompts, “So, this is about a friend of yours?”

“Yeah,” Pat confirms. “Clay. He rode through here a week ago on a white filly. Jenna said you reshod her?”

Travis nods thoughtfully. “That I did. Nice horse.”

Pat leans forward in his seat, elbows on his knees. “Did he happen to mention where he was going?”

Travis looks up from his carving, blinking at Pat. “Well, sure he did. He said he was going to look for work in Paloma, I said, he’d need to ford the river to get there, and his horse’d need better shoes, he said, could I shoe her, I said, yes I could. He was gone the next morning.”

Pat shakes his head, trying to make sense of it. Paloma’s right on the border, why would Clayton want to–

“You thinking of following him? I can reshoe your horse, if you like. Leave him with me tomorrow morning, I can have it done by lunch.” Travis pulls Pat out of his thoughts, obliviously helpful. Pat stares at Travis’s hands, watches as he shaves slivers off the back of a crude, but now clearly recognizable duck.

“That’d be great,” he replies, finally. “Much appreciated.” His mind’s already on the trail, now that he knows where he’s going. He’ll need dried food, another waterskin. A watertight saddlebag, if he can find one, to protect his valuables from the worst of the river.

He’s slow riding back to the saloon for lunch, and by the time he’s sat with a plate in front of him, he thinks he’s got a plan. He can spend the rest of today and tomorrow resting up and gathering supplies, and be gone by dawn the day after. Paloma’s only another few days away, so all Pat can do is hope Clay’s settled himself down for a bit, and that he won’t have to take his chase across the border.

He’s contemplating the dregs of his coffee when there’s a stir in the bar, prompted by Jenna looking out of the far window. “Oh, damn,” she says to the room at large, “Looks like Brian’s going after that filly that nearly kicked Simone’s knee in.”

There’s a murmur of interest from the patrons, some moving to look out the windows themselves. Pat, for his part, quietly stands and leaves the saloon, taking a brisk pace towards the stables.

Sure enough, out in the corral, the pinto Brian had been working with that morning is gone, replaced with a small chocolate filly. She’s barebacked, with a lead rope clipped to her harness dragging in the dirt at her feet. Brian’s on the inside, hanging on the far edge from where Pat’s approaching, but even that proximity seems to be too much for her, making her jump and shy from him every time she sees him.

Pat, when he reaches the fence, ends up near Justin and Griffin, both watching and speaking in low voices.

“-won’t get more than a blanket on her, today at least,” Justin is saying.

Griffin nods, but responds, “Sure, it’d be quick, but the kid’s really got some get-up-and-go with these things, so you never know with him. Hi, Pat.”

“Hey,” Pat says, but he’s distracted, eyes locked on Brian as he breaks away from the fence and starts to move into the pen-proper. For a moment, it seems as though the filly’s accepting the intrusion into her space, but then she finally notices him and startles, bolting to the other end of the pen. Brian watches her placidly, walks a slow arc towards her. Again, she sees him, spooks, bolts.

Pat’s broken a few horses in his time, would probably give it another go if he thought his back could take being thrown. You can either brute-force it – get a rope around its foot, put it on the ground until it calms – or get the damn thing to trust you. Either way, it’s a lot of repetitive behavior, doing the same thing over and over until the horse finally gets it into its head that it’s not the end of the world every time you touch its back. Pat figures Brian’s settled in for the long haul with this girl, ready to be in her space until she’ll let him in touching range, however long that takes.

Then, Brian spots Pat. His eyes go wide, looking caught out, looking _ seen, _ though Pat’s far from the only one watching him. He smiles at Pat, brief and warm, and then-

He changes tack, quite suddenly. He starts walking in sweeping paces across the pen, back and forth, totally unheeding of the filly’s fright every time he turns near her. It takes Pat a moment to see the method in the madness, but when he does, he grins wide. Past the fear making them wide and glassy, the filly’s got bright, smart eyes, and Brian knows she’s curious. After a few turns around the corral, she’s more interested in Brian than she is afraid, and she starts to follow at his back, letting him lead her in circles around the fence.

Brian stops abruptly, and turns to face her. She startles and shies, but doesn’t bolt. After a few more turns, a few more sharp stops, she’s looking right at him, not jumping at all. She’s caught, utterly, in Brian’s orbit, captivated by every move, and Pat’s just the same, eyes tracking him hungrily as he runs long fingers through his hair, pushing it back under his hat. 

Brian looks back at Pat, like he can feel his eyes on him, and Pat makes himself stare, impassive, makes himself raise an eyebrow, _ show me what you got. _ And Brian smiles, a cocky, sharp thing that’s all _ heat _pooling in Pat’s stomach, and he starts walking towards the damn horse.

He moves circumspectly, always at her front, hands out and open.

“No way,” Justin murmurs on Pat’s left, “No way will she let him in that quick, not even he could pull that off.”

Brian gets within an arm’s length, and holds out one hand, goes completely and utterly still. Pat’s chest goes tight, the splintered wood of the fence digging into his palms as he grips it white-knuckled, watching the filly stutter step, forwards, shying back, then forwards again, and finally, in one quick surge, pressing her muzzle into Brian’s open palm.

“Well, shit,” Griffin says, whistling low between his teeth. There’s a murmur of excitement from the gathered crowd, and Pat feels it too, a sudden swell of triumph and pride that has him jumping up onto the lowest slat of the fence, leaning over, wanting to get as close as he can. He just barely resists adding a _ whoop _ of his own, but he can’t keep the grin off his face.

Brian’s only got eyes for the filly now, rubbing hands up and down her head, scratching between her eyes. He’s talking to her in a low voice, too quiet for Pat to hear, but the tone carries in the soft smile on his face, fond and delighted. She swings her head up suddenly, sniffs at his hat, and his laugh travels, loud and bright and musical.

Most wranglers could safely call it a day, at that point. Too much work of this sort could scare a mustang off people for good, and Brian’s already done leaps and bounds more than Pat could’ve thought to expect. It looks like Brian might be ready to call it too, gives the girl one last long pat across her neck and turns towards the gate, but she keeps on following him when he goes, pushes her head right between his shoulder blades, sending him stumbling forwards and just about knocking the breath out of him. Pat snorts, and Brian looks up at him, a dangerous sort of light in his eyes.

“Bet you I can ride her without her bucking,” Brian says.

Pat blinks down at him. “You’ve had her thirty minutes,” he says, disbelieving.

“Then you’ll win,” Brian says, and his eyes are wide, frantic, burning. “Take the bet.”

“You’ve already been thrown once today,” Pat says, worry crawling in his chest and his voice, but Brian’s ahead of him, stepping right to the fence, looking up at Pat like he’s the only thing in the damn world, like they’re not being watched by half the town and God.

“And I’m betting that she won’t throw me. Take the bet, Pat Gill.”

Pat can’t move, can’t look away, can’t do anything but stare, and _ God, _is he something to stare at. “What do I get? If I win?” he finds himself asking, voice at a murmur.

Brian smiles. “I’ll let you pick. If you win.”

And then he’s off again, the filly at his heels, leaving Pat feeling tight and breathless.

There’s a saddle and a worn old blanket slung over the fence nearer by the stalls, and Brian reaches for the blanket first, holds it up for the filly to inspect. She huffs, shoves her nose into it, seems satisfied, and Brian smiles, scratches under her chin for her trouble. Pat can see his mouth moving, a constant, quiet stream of sound as he moves around to her flank, and it seems to put her at ease as Brian draws the blanket slowly across her back. She starts to trot as soon as he drops it fully on her, but doesn’t buck, and Brian lets her go easy, watches, patiently, as she takes a few turns around the corral, adjusting to the new weight on her back.

Pat thinks she’ll buck at the saddle – it’s too fast, too soon, and Brian’s good, he’s brilliant, he’s the best damn thing Pat’s ever seen, but he can’t be _ that _good.

Pat wonders what he’s saying to her, as he lifts the saddle slowly to her side, lets her feel the heft of it against her flank. He’s turned, now, back to Pat, but he watches the strain of Brian’s shoulders against his shirt as he raises it slowly, so slowly, onto her back. Pat can see the tension shoot through her suddenly, like she’s been struck with lightning, and Brian’s gone taut and nervous too, but somehow he steadies her until he’s done the buckles underneath her, gathered her lead rope loosely in his hands, and then he stamps once, sharply, to send her running. She takes off at a high, anxious gait, but Brian keeps hold of the end of her tether, takes quick strides to the center of the corral and lets her take her time. As she slows, calms, she starts to draw closer to him, and Brian helps her make the circle smaller, pulls the lead tighter and tighter until she’s trotting around him close enough to touch.

Brian’s bouncing on his toes by the time she’s returned fully to him, a broad grin taking over his face, and he doesn’t even hesitate, presses a hand to her neck, tangles fingers in her bridle, catches one foot in a stirrup and swings himself up and over, smooth as anything. She takes off at a trot, a near-startle, but Brian’s got one hand in her bridle and the other splayed across her broad neck, and she’s taking his direction beautifully, letting him lean and nudge her into an easy circle around the pen. She was made for a rider, with a gorgeous, loping gait, and Brian’s got her showing off now, taking her close by the fence as scattered applause rises through the gathered crowd. He accepts the praise like a flower soaking up sunlight, pulling his hat to his chest and bowing to his audience, and Pat can’t quite resist throwing in some noise of his own, whistling sharply between his fingers and his thumb.

Brian slows on his round this time, pulls the girl to an easy stop right in front of Pat, close enough that his jeans are nearly brushing Pat’s fingers where they hang over the fence. Brian’s pure elation, bright and infectious, smiling down at him with a joy that Pat can’t help but return.

“How was that, Pat Gill?” Brian says triumphantly, and Pat raises an eyebrow, thinks, _ you just got a skittish mustang to take a saddle and rider in an hour, you know damn well how it _ was, _ you know you’re brilliant. _

But he’s still grinning right back up at him, and he returns, “Pretty damn good, Brian David Gilbert.”

Brian laughs breathlessly, and Pat wants– wants more, wants _ closer, _and he stands up straight on his perch, pushes himself up on his palms, right into Brian’s space. “So,” he says, quiet, “what do you want?”

“What?” Brian says, voice cracking. His smile’s frozen on his face, eyes wide like he’s been caught doing – something. He’s swaying towards Pat, but he’s got a white-knuckled grip on the reins, holding himself back.

“The bet,” Pat clarifies. “She didn’t buck. You win. You never said what you’d get.”

“Oh,” Brian breathes, going soft and delighted. “Well. I reckon–”

“Brian, holy _ shit!” _Simone comes screeching from the saloon, and the amber of the moment shatters around them. Brian reels back, and recovers himself admirably, turning a rakish grin on Simone. 

“She rides like a dream, Sim,” he tells her. “Smooth as anything.”

“Only because she’s trying to impress you,” Pat mutters, just to watch Brian shift and smile and go pink under the tease.

Simone snorts, swinging herself up on the fence by Pat. “Sure. So, what’s the name?”

Brian tilts his head, considering. “Charmer?”

“God, no,” Simone huffs. “That’s awful. Why don’t we let our dear guest do the honors?” She nods at Pat, who, lost, looks up at Brian for an explanation.

“We only name the mustangs once we can ride them,” he tells Pat. “And no offence, but I’m not letting you name her. Your horse is called _ Charles. _ You’d probably go for Suzanna, or something.”

Privately, Pat thinks the filly looks like more of a Gloria. Still, for the sake of his own pride, he argues, “Suzanna’s a perfectly fine name for a horse. You could even shorten it to Suzie!”

Brian makes a face, fond and disgruntled. “And this is why we don’t let handsome strangers have naming privileges,” he tells Simone.

Simone shakes her head, sighing good-naturedly, and leans out past Pat’s shoulders, bellowing loud enough to make him wince.  
“Jenna! _ Jenna!” _

After a long moment of silence, Jenna’s voice comes drifting faintly out of the open saloon doors. _ “What?” _

_ “What should we name the horse?” _

Another pause.

_ “Fiesta!” _Jenna yells.

Simone blinks, then shrugs. “Fiesta it is.”

* * *

Simone takes the newly-christened Fiesta off Brian’s hands, sends him off with Pat with a knowing look that he can’t quite interpret.

Pat’s planning on saddling back up, hitting up the general store for supplies, and he tells Brian as much, tells him he’s welcome to come along. It’s selfish of him, certainly, to keep trying to solicit Brian’s company when Brian is bright and young and busy and Pat’s just a grumpy old bastard with a grumpy old horse, but truth be told, Pat’s been lonely. He’d not realized, until he’d had Brian along this morning, just how much he’s been missing Clay’s steady, constant presence at his side, someone to mutter an aside to, someone to share a quick and knowing glance with.

Still, Brian agrees to go on with him easily, like he’s got no qualms about Pat whatsoever, no suspicion of any ulterior motives, any untoward intentions.

“Just let me,” he tells Pat, already drifting towards the horse stalls, “I rode in with Jonah today, on my family’s horse.” He disappears into a stall, returns leading along a truly massive, kind-eyed cream draft horse, drowsy and docile as Brian swings up on his back. He trots up abreast with Pat and Charlie, and he’s nearly of a height with Pat, on this horse, and looks right pleased about it, too.

The horse is named Moose, apparently. Brian shrinks sheepishly from the dry look this earns him from Pat, but he still explains, weakly, “It’s short for _ Vamoose.” _

Pat doesn’t quite smile, at that, doesn’t snort a laugh, but he can feel his lips twitch, at this kid and his horse and his squeaking, embarrassed voice, and when he mutters, “_ Vamoose, Moose,” _ as he trots on ahead just to hear Brian laugh in surprise behind him, he hears Clay’s voice in his head, indulgent and bemused, _ going soft, Patrick? _

His chest aches suddenly, thinking of Clay, of his ashen, stricken face as he’d torn his hand out of Pat’s grip, skittered backwards from the blood soaking into the dust at his feet. The memory sobers Pat, turns him silent and inwards as they head off towards the general store. Brian doesn’t seem to mind altogether much, chatters absently at Pat without waiting for Pat to say anything in return, and he’s grateful for the easy company. As they ride along, it becomes clearer and clearer that Brian _ knows _ this town, lives it, is loved by it, is constantly twisting in his saddle to call after someone, ask after one woman’s horse, another man’s wife, a kid’s dog. They all call back, as well, ask after his untameable stallion, his tameable filly, his mother, his sister, his brother, his friend, his home – _ “You still needing that door back up on its hinges?” “Naw, Travis fixed it up, but thanks kindly!” _– and Pat feels strange and out of place, hanging on the coattails of their goodwill towards him.

Brian refuses to let him hang back, though, won’t let Pat trail in his shadow. He finds himself introduced to folks, the same ones who watched him warily as he rode in, the same ones that were openly eavesdropping as the sheriff picked his brain. They’re a hell of a lot nicer now, nod to him like a neighbor, fuss over him a little, ask if he’s fed. It makes him go hot around the ears, makes him feel warm. Folks don’t usually take to him so quickly, don’t usually take to him at all. He rarely stays long enough in any one place to give them the chance.

The general store is as creaking and rickety as the rest of the town, and its shelves are small and stuffed to the brim, making the whole place feel like a tight squeeze with both him and Brian pressed up against the counter.

“Afternoon, Jeff!” Brian’s already calling out as he ducks in, a bell tinkling over their heads.

“Afternoon, Brian!” comes a cheerful reply from somewhere behind the counter, a chaotic mess of sacks and crates and boxes. After a moment, a head appears from somewhere in the jumble, a pair of bright, dark eyes set in a cheery face. “Heard you got thrown off by the big guy again.”

Brian groans good-naturedly, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Does anyone care that I managed to ride a wild mustang in under an hour today, or is it only my bad news that makes the rounds?”

“Only when it’s funny,” Jeff says, grinning. He glances at Pat with open curiosity. “Making friends, I see?”

Brian nods, flourishing his hands as he makes the introductions. “Certainly am, my dear Jeff. Pat, this is our beloved shopkeeper, Jeff Ramos. Jeff, our mysterious stranger, Pat Gill. He’ll be riding dramatically out of town under the cover of night, I’m sure, so he’ll need some things to keep him going on the trail.”

Pat winces a little, Brian’s joke hitting a little too close to home, but Jeff doesn’t seem to notice, pulling himself fully upright and leaning across the counter, turning the full force of his smile on Pat. “Reckon I might be able to help. What were you looking for?”

Jeff’s a friendly sort by nature, it seems, and Pat thinks if he were any other person in this town, he might spend a little longer checking up on him, collecting gossip, asking after Pat’s day, his horse, his life, and Pat surprises himself with a pang of _ want, _wanting that place for himself in this little nowhere town. As it is, though, Pat’s a stranger, and Jeff is in the business of making money, so Pat rattles off his little list, food and skins and string and rope, a couple tools of his that had worn out or broken, a couple more that he’d made do without until now, on account of not being able to afford them.

“I’m also looking for a nicer pack, if you’ve got one,” Pat adds, once Jeff’s done rummaging to and fro, has Pat’s things stacked neatly on the counter, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. “I need to ford the river towards Paloma, so anything that’d keep the worst of the water out would be appreciated.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Brian startle a little, look over at him in surprise.

Jeff tilts his head, considering. After a moment, he disappears behind his wall of crates again, and re-emerges hefting a sturdy saddlebag, dark shiny leather and thick stitching, exactly what Pat’s looking for.

Jeff catches the way Pat leans in – smart man – and slides the bag across the counter, keeping one hand on it. “I think this might do you nicely,” he starts, and his tone is hesitant, “But it’s a good make, real popular in California right now. It’d cost you a pretty penny.”

“I can pay,” Pat says quickly, “whatever it is. Doesn’t matter, I’ll take it.”

Pat feels an encroaching dread near as soon as the words are out of his mouth, noting the way Jeff blinks at him, nonplussed, the way Brian stills at his side. Feels it grow as he carefully counts coins onto the counter. He ought to have been more coy, bargained the price down, shouldn’t have agreed blindly like the sort of man for whom money is not an object. Shouldn’t have overpaid for himself at the saloon either, throwing down coins as soon as he walked in. Pockets that loose tend to carry a reputation, and right now, Pat either looks like a target, or a whole lot of trouble.

He thinks, briefly, of every dandy he’s ever seen, riding west in bright, expensively-dyed colors, pockets heavy with someone else’s fortune and a shiny pistol that they don’t know how to use, proudly atop a glossy, well-bred horse that they’ll run to death within a month. He thinks of bandits and crooked sheriffs, rangers turned thieves, blood crusted under their fingernails and tobacco crusted in their grinning teeth as they throw down gold coins on poker tables like breadcrumbs. 

He thinks of Sheriff McElroy and his brood, shiny badge and sharp eyes, asking after the kind of trouble Pat might be.

He thinks he’ll ride tomorrow at dawn.

* * *

He’s quick back to his room, when they ride back to the saloon. Now that he’s thought it, he’s committed to leaving tomorrow morning before sunup, and he finds himself anxious to pack what he can. 

Brian lets him go easily, waves him off upstairs with a complicated, inscrutable expression that only makes Pat more worried. Brian, quick and silver-tongued, could so easily murmur a few odd words to the right people, the slightest suggestion that Pat may be bad news and Pat could be done here by dinnertime.

He lingers, packs and repacks, finds himself better supplied than he thought he might be, given he’s losing an extra day. He’d mostly thought to sniff around for supplies at the clinic tomorrow, anything that might make a trail wound less deadly, and he’d wanted a new hat. The biggest loss will be Charlie’s shoes; new ones would’ve made the river crossing a hell of a lot easier, but Pat’s not altogether worried, has made far more treacherous trips on Charlie’s back. 

He carefully considers what goes into his new pack. For the time of year, he hopes the water won’t be too high, but he’s still taking care to protect a few valuables from the worst he might get. Some paper-wrapped biscuits that would be ruined if they got waterlogged, a set of dry underthings for after he’s crossed, a few odd coins. Better to split the money between packs, in the event that one gets lost, somehow. After some moments’ consideration, he goes digging in his old pack for his revolver, and gingerly tucks it into the new pack.

Voices drift in a low hum up from downstairs, the sounds of an evening winding up, plates and glasses clinking off each other, chairs scraping on the floorboards. Music, too, he realizes. A low, jaunty melody on out-of-tune piano keys, accompanied by the distant plucking of a Spanish guitar, both of them overtaken by the distinct sound of two voices finding a tune over the buzz of the room at large.

Pat checks his bag one last time, runs a thumb over the barrel of his revolver like a reassurance. He doesn’t want to – he _ won’t _get into any spats, not here, not now. He’ll leave nice and quiet in the morning, or before, if he’s asked to.

He braces himself at the foot of the stairs, but the bar hardly gives him a glance as he looks around the room. Jenna waves, as does the other guy, Russ. Otherwise, though, aside from a cursory look in his direction, Pat’s old news.

Besides, there are better things to be looking at tonight.

Brian’s the one at the piano in the far corner, swaying gently to his own rhythm as his fingers dance across the yellowed keys. Beside him, in a chair appropriated from one of the tables, there’s the source of the guitar, a man with his eyes on his strings as he plucks out an intricate pattern. He’s a big fella, broad in the shoulders, with the rough-hewn look of a cowhand about him, but he holds the guitar on his lap like a precious thing, like a part of himself, and his fingers move expertly, dexterously curled across the bridge.

They’re both singing, eyes half-lidded as they hum, the cowhand’s voice low and rich while Brian’s pulls up, melodic. Sounds like the end of a song, hands slowing, voices drifting off.

Pat watches, rapt, in the stairwell, until they fall silent, and Brian’s eyes snap open, a smile spreading across his face as if he’s been pulled suddenly from a trance. There’s a spattering of applause in the moments afterwards, and Pat takes the opportunity to pick his way across the room, nodding at folks as he goes. Griffin’s holding court over a card table again, Travis at his left tonight, but Justin nowhere to be seen. They both wave as he passes, and Griffin raises the deck, a silent invitation to join again, but Pat shakes his head quickly, sets himself down at an empty table in an empty back corner. It puts him at better ease, having his back against the wall, the whole room before him. If it just so happens at his seat has a clear view of the piano – well, that’s just good luck.

Or back luck, he realizes, as Brian glances to the side and immediately catches Pat’s eyes. He smiles at him, soft and open in the low light, and Pat feels caught, stripped, feels himself smile back without quite meaning to. 

He watches as Brian leans back, murmurs something to his friend that makes the man stare back at Brian, scathing, eyebrows raised. Brian just laughs, turns back to the piano, and the man sets up to play as well, strums a few errant chords as he shifts the guitar across his thighs. 

Brian looks at Pat sidelong, smile still clinging to his eyes as his fingers start to pick out a loping tune, lifted as the guitar joins it. It’s Brian’s voice that leads, high and clear, when they start to sing.

_My love is a rider, wild bronchos he breaks,_  
_ Though he’s promised to quit it, just for my sake._  
_ He ties up one foot, the saddle puts on,  
With a swing and a jump he is mounted and gone._

_The first time I met him, ‘twas early one spring,_  
_ Riding a broncho, a high-headed thing._  
_ He tipped me a wink as he gaily did go;  
For he wished me to look at his bucking broncho. _

Pat’s so captured, so distracted trying to figure out if Brian just _ winked _at him, that he jumps when Russ appears suddenly, dropping a plate at his elbow. Sheepish, he thanks him quietly, busies himself with eating his meat, tries to ignore the way his ears are burning. Brian’s eyes flit to his fingers now, his smile as wistful as his song. He looks charming; he looks charmed. Pat hardly knows him. Pat’s leaving at dawn.

He’s looking at Pat like he’s still on that mustang, wild and brilliant and thrown.

_Now all you young maidens, where’er you reside,_  
_ Beware of the cowboy who swings the raw-hide;_  
_ he’ll court you and pet you and leave you and go  
In the spring up the trail on his bucking broncho._

His friend sets down the guitar while the room’s clapping, claps a hand on Brian’s shoulder, clearly begging off of another song. Brian concedes gracefully, waving his friend towards the bar, while he makes right for Pat’s table, sits himself down without an invitation.

Pat drags his fork through the last of his beans, struggles to meet Brian’s eyes. “You two’re good,” he eventually offers, dumbly.

Brian lights up all the same. “Thanks! That’s Jonah, by the way. Works on Ma’s ranch.”

“The one you rode in with,” Pat remembers.  
  
“The very same,” Brian says, proudly. “He’ll swear up and down he learned guitar from some famous outlaw that raised him in San Antonio, but don’t believe a word he says.”

Pat snorts, despite himself. “Him, I don’t see brushing shoulders with outlaws. _ You, _on the other hand, seem like the type to go courting trouble.”

Brian gasps, lays a hand across his chest like a fainting maiden, but he’s grinning wide. “Why, Patrick. How dare you say such a completely true, yet utterly dastardly thing.”

Pat plays his part, raises an eyebrow dryly. “Don’t recall ever telling you to call me Patrick.”

Brian’s smile widens. “But it is your name, ain’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, then, _ Patrick.” _After a moment, Brian drops the affect, says softly, “You really liked the song?”

Pat doesn’t quite know how to say that he’s never cared for trail songs out of anyone else’s mouth before, so he just shrugs, says, “Sure, ‘course I did. You’re a real talent. Could make serious money off a voice like that.”

“Not much of an audience, out here,” Brian counters, but he’s clearly pleased, going loose and happy under the praise.

Pat taps his fork against the rim of his plate thoughtfully. “Could always take it on the road,” he points out.

Brian laughs like a bell, smile going a little solemn. “Oh, I tried that once. I was barely fifteen, decided I was going to sing in New York City. A gang rode through one week on a cattle drive headed up to Montana, and I talked a couple of ‘em into letting me hitch on north with them until we hit a city where I could catch a ride east. I left with them in the middle of the night, rode sidesaddle behind a horse thief called Jake. ‘Course, the next morning at their camp, their boss – he was this old Texas ranger, used to be a captain – found me with his men, said, _ no sir, _that he wasn’t kidnapping any boys from their beds in the night, and dragged me right back to town by my collar, apologized to Clint in front of God and everybody. He was still the sheriff then, but it was Justin that got real mad, threw me in a cell and left me there until Ma and Doctor McElroy and Jonah got sick of chewing me out. It was most of a whole day, I think.”

Pat can imagine it, is the thing, and it makes him smile, can see Brian, scrawny and scruffy and scrappy, sneaking around and making a run for it with nothing but the clothes on his back, petulant and insolent as he’s dragged back, kicking and screaming by the scruff of his neck, like a kitten. There’s an echo of that kid now, in the sheepish shrug of his shoulders, the glint of remembered mischief in his eyes, the proud, stubborn jut of his chin. Pat has no idea how this town’s kept him so long.

Pat grins, shakes his head, tells him, “New York’s not all it cracks up to be,” because it really isn’t.

Brian leans forward, eyes wider than Pat’s ever seen them. “You’ve _ been?” _

Pat shrugs. “Sure, a few times.” And he’s not sure what it is about Brian, that makes him more loose-lipped than he ever was with Clayton, but he finds himself telling Brian everything he remembers about New York, the noise and the lights and the sounds, the protests and the people and the police. He racks his memory for stories about terrible street performers, loose horses, raving mad lunatics screaming about salvation, just to make Brian laugh, giggling into his hands, equal parts entertained and amazed. Pat’s not been back to New York in years, maybe nearer a decade now, but he finds himself imagining showing Brian the city, watching his face when he sees the streets alive with music at night.

Jonah moves quietly, or maybe Pat’s just too caught up in the conversation, but Pat startles when he appears at Brian’s shoulder, leans in close to murmur to him, “Getting late, Bri. We oughta head home.”  
  
Brian’s face drops, disappointed, and Pat remembers – one horse.

“I can take him home,” Pat says, without thinking. “If you want to head now.”

Brian and Jonah both blink at him, surprise evident in both their faces.  
  
“You sure, friend? You don’t have to go to the trouble,” Jonah says, and there’s something guarded in his tone, like he doesn’t think it’s much trouble for Pat at all, like he knows full well why it isn’t.

Pat shrugs, keeps his voice carefully flat. “Sure. I’ll be up a while anyways, I don’t mind the company, if Brian wants to stay a little later.”

Brian’s smile is back in full force, and he turns it on Jonah, eyes pleading. “Come on, Jo, it’s alright. You take Moose back, say night to everyone for me.”

Jonah shakes his head, but he’s already turned half towards the doors, exhaustion evident in the drawn lines of his face. “You know Ma will wait up for you.”

Brian snorts. “She’ll try, and she’ll fall asleep as soon as the dog lies down on her feet, and I’ll have to wake you up to carry her to bed.”

They watch Jonah as he hefts his guitar across his back, waves his goodbyes to the bar, but as soon as the door swings shut behind him, Brian leans across the table, voice low and conspiratorial. “Want to hear about the time Jonah and Laura tried to start a cattle drive when they were thirteen?”

* * *

Pat judges it to be just shy of midnight when Brian’s fifth yawn in as many minutes prompts Griffin to gently order Pat to take the kid home. 

Pat mounts first, has a brief moment of panic when he realizes he’s got no earthly idea how to get Brian up behind him, but Brian just gets a foot up on one of the stirrups and swings himself up behind Pat, easy as anything.

He’s warm, startlingly so, heavy and alive where he’s pressed close along the line of Pat’s back, and it leaves him struck dumb and silent as Brian directs him out of town, a worn trail making itself evident even in the pale half-light.

Eventually, Brian falls silent too, all the idle noise worn out of him, and when Pat feels the press of his forehead against his shoulder, soft hair tickling Pat’s neck, he figures the kid’s started to doze. He nearly startles again when arms come up loosely around his waist, fingers gripping Pat’s jacket.

“Pat?” Brian murmurs into his back, voice tired, a little raw.

“Yeah?”

“You’re leaving this morning, aren’t you.” 

It’s not a question, but Pat still sighs, says, “That’s the plan.”

“Your friend was the same,” Brian says quietly, and Pat tenses, at the mention of Clay. 

“He was real quiet, jumpy, kept looking over his shoulder, like he was waiting for someone to ride in after him.”

Brian’s voice is drowsy, meandering, but his hands are fisted tight in Pat’s coat, his forehead pressed hard against him, and the accusation hangs heavy between them.

“I’m not,” Pat says softly, stops, doesn’t know how to explain. “He’s my_ friend. _He was shook up pretty bad, after– after our last job. I owe it to him, to find him, make sure he’s not done anything stupid off on his own.”

“But it’s about the money too.” That’s not a question either.

“It’s as much his as it is mine,” Pat confirms. He doesn’t know how to– Doesn’t know what he wants Brian to know– 

“It’s not _ dirty _ money,” he hisses, and it sounds like a lie to his own ears. “I’m not, I’m not a bad sort.” _ Liar, liar, liar. _

There’s silence again, as they approach the ranch, just the steady thud of Charlie’s tread on the trail, the huff of Brian’s breath, soft against his shoulder, the low shuffling of cattle out for the night. The ranch house is a small thing, quiet and dormant, but Pat can see the door propped open, a lamp still burning low somewhere inside, a dog asleep in the doorway, head lolled to the side. It seems… cozy.

Brian shifts against his back, presses more closely to him, and murmurs, “I believe you, Pat Gill."

* * *

Pat tosses and turns and doesn’t catch any sleep, or not nearly enough anyways, and the sky’s still a deep black when he gives up and drags himself out of bed, starts the trudge towards the stables, loaded down with all his bags. He’d left another dollar coin on the bar counter, as he crept out, careful of the creaking wooden floor. Had debated finding something to scrawl a note on, one last thank you to Jenna and Simone and the rest, but ultimately, it felt inadequate. It just wasn’t enough; none of it was, not the coin, not a note, not the soft, _ “night, Brian,” _he’d murmured as Brian looked back at him from the steps of his porch, not the tired smile he’d gotten in return.

Against his better interests, Pat _ likes _this place, these people. It seems a good place to linger. Maybe, he thinks, he’ll come back through again, if he manages to talk Clay back up north. Stay a little longer, make a better impression. Do odd jobs that need doing, maybe even ask the sheriff for work. 

He shakes himself out of his little fantasy as he nears the stalls. Charlie’s still saddled up from their ride to the ranch, and he chuffs at Pat, starts to shift in excitement as he’s clipping on the saddlebags, tugging on straps and clips to make sure everything’s secure. Neither of them are as well rested as Pat would’ve liked, for the road ahead, and Pat’s thighs are already starting to ache at the mere thought of another long trail, but they’ve both been a little cooped up here, he thinks, and it’ll be good to run.

Pat takes Charlie loosely by the reins, leads him carefully, quietly out of the pen, slowly closes the heavy gate behind him.

Turns around to see Brian, leaned up against the fence, watching him. He’s wearing a jacket he wasn’t before, light tan, canvas, not hide, and it’s too big, sits loose and odd on his shoulders. Moose is nowhere around that Pat can see, so he must’ve walked all the way back into town, but if the long road’s worn him out, it doesn’t show on his face, eyes gleaming bright and dangerous in the scant remaining moonlight.

“I know what I want,” he tells Pat, low and determined, “for winning the bet.”

Pat, helpless to resist, steps in closer, matches his tone. “Yeah? And what would that be?”

Brian smiles at him then, wry and sad, and says, “Take me with you, Pat Gill.”

And that’s when Pat notices, finally, the thick pack slung across his shoulders, the distant shift to his feet, his eyes, like he’s already half-gone, away down a trail in his mind’s eye, and Pat– 

_ wants– _

and thinks of Brian, all of fifteen and riding sidesaddle behind the first man who would take him, thinks of a better man than Pat will ever be dragging him right back home to the folks who love him–

but that was years ago, and Brian’s a grown man now, can choose to leave whenever he wants, with whoever he damn pleases, and this town loves him, but Pat _ wants _him, wants his voice and his eyes and his hands, wants the music that moves around him constant as the air, and Pat doesn’t think he can keep on pretending that he’s anything but selfish, not anymore.

But he doesn’t want him sidesaddle, or up behind him, clinging and delicate, and Brian’s staring up at him, incandescent on a precipice, like he’s waiting to be told no, waiting to be told, _ prove it. _

So Pat tells him, “I’m not taking on any free riders. You don’t come without your own horse.”

There’s a heavy moment, a blink, and then Brian’s gone, whip-quick as he hops the fence, makes for the stalls on light feet. The black pinto, to Pat’s surprise, allows itself to be led into the pen, watches Brian with sharp eyes as he disappears into the tack shed, returns with a saddle, and _ oh, _ Pat understands suddenly why this mustang’s thrown Brian five times, why Brian’s let him, why he keeps on trying. He’s smart, this thing, the type of horse that you never really break, just the type that might, maybe, one day, _ allow _you to ride it.

It stands still, perfectly well-behaved as Brian saddles it with quick fingers, like they’ve done this song-and-dance before, and Pat watches Brian’s fingers shake as he clips his own pack to the saddle, his whole body drawn taut and breathless. Pat can see his lips moving, low and tense as he splays his hand across the horse’s neck, and whatever it is, the mustang senses it too, stamps a front leg once, twice, ears twitching. He looks back at Pat, calls out, too loud in the dampening silence of the early morning. “Ready on the gate, once I’ve got him.”

Pat blinks at him, disbelieving. “You really think you’ll get him?” Still, he moves quickly to the gate, keeps his hand on the latch, lets anticipation start to crawl up tight in his chest. He wants to believe him. He wants to _ see _him.

Brian smiles at him, distant and sad and excited, fifteen-and-not, and says, “Sure I will. He wants out. I want out too. We have an accord.”

It happens in a matter of moments, a matter of blinks.

Brian swinging up, bearing down hard, the mustang bucking, taking off at a run, and Brian, _pushing__, _ pressing the line of his body down and _ down _ against its neck, steering with his legs more than the reins, leaning harshly away as the thing nearly takes them both crashing into the fence, and Pat, thinking, _ now or never, kid, _and throwing the latch, throwing the gate, stepping wide.

They thunder past in a great rush, clouds of dust thrown up in their wake, and then they’re out onto the road and Pat’s making for Charlie, swinging up and after them as fast as he can manage. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if Brian’s thrown again. If the mustang shrieks and bucks until Brian’s left in the dirt again, broken and crumpled and alone. Pat’s got hands tight in Charlie’s reins, heart up in his throat, thudding hard enough to hurt, and he’s thinking about praying for the first time in a decade and a half, but–

It won’t make a damn difference now. It’s all in Brian’s hands. All he can do is watch. 

Brian doesn’t let the mustang take them far, rears up fast, pulls the reins hard with him, and the mustang squeals, forced to stop and rear back with him, and Pat watches them both, pulled wild and taut together in the half-light, and thinks, helplessly, _ please. _

The mustang settles, quite suddenly, and all at once. Hell if Pat knows what does it, other than the sheer force of Brian himself, but one moment the thing’s fighting, and the next, the dust settles, thick and heavy as the silence, and it’s stood gentle at the end of the road, flank heaving, as Brian leans his forehead heavily against its mane, eyes slipping closed.

Before he knows he’s moving, Pat urges Charlie to a trot, pulls them up cross to Brian, close enough that they’re brushing thighs, close enough for Pat to feel the heat coming off him like a coal oven, close enough that when Brian looks up, eyes bright and glassy, Pat can see his sweat-slick face shining, can– can feel hot little huffs of breath against his cheek, when Brian ducks in close under Pat’s hat, presses their heads together, nose-to-nose.

“How was that, Pat Gill?” he breathes, soft against the corner of his mouth, and Pat couldn’t possibly say, so he doesn’t. He’s thrumming, both of them are, ringing hot like the air after a gunshot, horribly, _ perfectly _alive, and Pat tangles fingers in the damp hair at Brian’s nape, takes his jaw in one rough palm, turns his head just-so, and kisses him, rough and wet and as fiercely, brutally wholehearted as he has ever been.

Brian gives as good as he gets, melts pliant into Pat’s hands like he belongs there, breathes soft noises against his lips, and there are long fingers now, scrabbling at Pat’s neck, nails seeking purchase, and when there’s–

the bang, a door slamming,

a murmur of a voice, a question, drowsy,

enough to startle, to break them apart with a gasp, Brian’s lips are red, spit-slick and bitten, eyes wide, blown, and Pat wants to damn the whole thing, forget the trip, the money, the blood, live here in this precise second, wet breath against wet breath, until he dies.

The seconds tick on, of course, _ now or never, kid, _and Brian murmurs, “Simone,” fingertips still pressed hard against Pat’s neck, eyes flicking to the saloon, an oil lamp flickering on behind a curtain on the second floor, “heard the horses.”

“Quick, then,” Pat tells him softly, only half a thought as he breaks away, swings Charlie around, takes off at a gallop. Doesn’t even look back -- the heavy thud of hooves close at his heels follows soon enough, and sooner after that, Brian’s pulled up beside him, eyes wide on the road ahead, something bright in them, fear maybe, but exhilaration too. Chest heaving, hands tight on the reins, and Pat remembers being that young, a world and a half ahead of him and somehow even more behind. He hopes, guilt heavy in his stomach, that Brian won’t regret this. Knows that he will, if he lives long enough to realize what a mistake this is. What a mistake Pat is.

As they ride further and further into the desert, the town shrinking to a speck behind them, Brian starts to pull ahead at a thundering pace. Pat’s about to warn him that he’ll wear his horse out too fast, won’t be able to get to the river without a rest at that pace, but when Pat looks at him, he’s gone loose-limbed and leaning, one hand on the reins and the other loosely braced on his horse’s flank, and his expression is soft, distant, untouchable. Pat can’t help but smile; he knows the feeling, feels it too. The ride settles into Pat easy, like an old habit, until every beat of Charlie’s hooves is as solid in his chest as the beat of his own heart. So they’ll break before fording the river, it might be useful to examine the terrain before driving on ahead. In any case, it’s worth it to watch Brian like this, free and wild like he was born on horseback, serene as the early dawn.

To the east, the sky is starting to change, grey light rising softly over the desert. Soon enough, the horizon will flood orange, red, as the sun rises. It’ll take the chill out of their bones, make the river gleam and shine in the distance like quicksilver. Pat finds himself craning ahead, beyond the trail, beyond the river, mind already reaching for Paloma, and whatever they’ll find there. He’s spent weeks now, chasing Clay, running from–

He’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do, if he actually finds him.

They ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song brian sings in this chapter is [bucking bronco (my love is a rider)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXXgYj_MJdk) and i think it might've been an actual old western song? my research was inconclusive but the lyrics are romantic so it's good enough for me.
> 
> feel free to find me @heybatterbatter on tumblr! i was writing polygon fic way back in 2017 but i'm just getting back into the newish community, so i'm happy to find new folks to talk to!


	2. Dusk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for:  
-genre-typical guns and violence  
-brief, nonspecific discussion of the events of 2017 involving nick robinson, because he's a shitbag and i'm still kind of working through that. if you'd like to skip it, stop reading at the section beginning with "they make good time that day," and pick back up at "they ride into paloma at sundown".  
-nonbrief, very specific sexual content  
-judicious use of whatever the fuck brennan lee mulligan was on during the coup overboard

Pat slows them to a loping trot, when Brian’s horse starts to falter. 

Brian’s starting to look a little worn himself, slumping into his jacket, breath coming in quick huffs as they hit on some rougher terrain. Now that the sun’s peeking bright over the horizon, the rush and excitement of the pre-dawn is draining, leaving the both of them regretting a sleepless night with nothing but a long trail ahead. Pat watches Brian carefully, quick glances, snatches of thought he can’t help but have. In the stark daylight, it feels like the hours before are dreamlike, surreal – the kiss, sharp, biting, fingers brand-hot on his neck, the rush of it all, wavering in his mind’s eye like the illusion of water far off in the desert under a burning sun. Brian looks somehow more solid now, blinking blearily at the trail ahead, mouth set in a grim, tired line.

The land around them rises with the sun, the scant brush rustling with hidden little things, lizards and packrats darting between outcrops of rocks. Pat squints at a great bird gliding far overhead in the cloudless sky; he thinks it might be an eagle, broad brown wings spread wide and graceful, but he’s not entirely sure. He was never much one for birdwatching, that was always Clayton, breaking up long stretches of trail by pointing out a swarm of vultures circling something in the far distance, or cactus wrens perched atop towering saguaros, when they were further westward. 

Ranchers tend to rise with the dawn as well – always things to be tended to, out in places like this – and Pat finds himself bowled over by a new wave of guilt as he imagine’s Brian’s family waking to an empty bed, a hastily-packed room, footprints fading in the dust. He’s never met Brian’s mother, his sister either, but the memory of Jonah’s eyes burns into him, scathing, one hand braced protective on the back of Brian’s chair. Justin’s cheery teasing, his wife’s brusque fussing, every passing neighbor keeping a tab on him.

They’ve been silent, since they left town, Brian lost in thought and Pat trying desperately not to be, and his voice comes out cracked, rough and abrupt when he asks, “Won’t your family worry?”

Brian blinks as if coming out of a daze, meets Pat’s eyes sidelong. “Of course they will,” he says, a little offhand, a little sad. “I can’t stub my toe without someone or another going into a panic – but I guess that’s how it is, growing up in a town where everyone is practically family. Everyone will be the same with Justin’s kids, when they’re older. I guess once someone’s seen you at six years old screaming and crying over some skinned knees like the rapture’s come, there’s just no growing up from that. I’ll probably have to grow a beard before anyone notices I managed to make it to twenty-five.”

Pat snorts, lets himself smile at the odds of the two – Brian, young and squalling as Doctor McElroy tends to his scrapes, and Brian-the-Older, trail-hardened and rugged, sun-worn skin poking out from a bushy beard. Both as difficult to picture as they are oddly possible in Pat’s mind.

Brian smiles right back at him, askance, but turns his eyes forward, voice carefully light as he goes on. “They’ll know where I am, if that’s what you mean, though. I left a note for Ma and Jonah, and it was Laura that helped me pack.”

Pat stares at him in open surprise. “Your sister?”

Brian shrugs. “Sure. We’ve been planning a daring getaway forever. She thought running away to New York was a great plan too – she just got real mad that time because they wouldn’t let her go along with me on account of her being a girl, and I don’t think any of ‘em wanted to get caught sneaking her out of town. Can get hanged for that, around here.”

Pat’s hands tighten in the reins, breath coming shorter. “For good reason,” he says, maybe a little sharper than he means to, but he’s caught thinking back, the memory weeks old but no less fresh for him poking at it like an open wound; her tear-stricken face near the front of the crowd, watching-and-not-watching between splayed fingers. Pat had seen the whole thing, had made himself stay until he’d stopped kicking and writhing, until they’d started to cut him down from the gallows. It had lost him time, and Clay’s trail had almost gone cold by the time Pat was on it, but he’d had to know that he was dead. He’d had to be  _ sure.  _

He’s snapped from his thoughts by a sharp gasp from Brian, and Pat looks up, follows his wide-eyed gaze far ahead, to where the river gleams in the distance.

Pat sighs his relief as he surveys the calm water, sees quickly enough that it’s low enough for them to cross without much trouble. There’d been a dry spell, the last few weeks, but it’s late enough in the summer that a sudden flash of rain could roll in at any moment, leave the river bloated and treacherous, swelling in rolling waves over the loose ground at its banks.

There’s a fairly steep drop-off to the riverbank, enough that Pat wordlessly pulls Charlie up ahead of Brian, leaves him following at a few paces behind while Pat trots along the edge for a safe enough spot to ride down. He chooses one after a few moments, a slope nearby a few shrubs, maybe a little more sheer than he’d like, but it looks a mite more packed and solid than the rest of the ridge that’s all loose dirt, liable to give way and take Charlie’s legs out from under him.

They take the drop almost sidelong, Charlie’s hooves skittering across the rocks as they skid down the ridge, and Pat spares a quick moment to be deeply grateful for the old ass, how he’ll let Pat take him through hell and high water without so much as a blink of hesitation, steady as she goes. They circle round once they hit the riverbank, Pat stroking a brief hand up Charlie’s neck, squinting up against the sun to where Brian’s appeared, leaning out over the edge, staring right back down at him from atop his mustang.

“Ground’s steady,” Pat calls up, “Just take it easy.” Brian’s mustang has taken the terrain will enough so far, but if he doesn’t trust Brian to take him down the drop, if he spooks, or worse, falls, it could be deadly for him and Brian both.

“Easy,” Brian echoes breezily, shooting Pat a grin, and backing his horse off. He eyes the drop, and Pat eyes him, the way he braces his shoulders, bites his lip, considering. He’s steering with his legs again, one hand nominally on the reins like a gesture, but Pat can see him leaning, and the mustang’s leaning with him, aligning itself against the drop.

They start forward suddenly, taking the slope at a near-trot, and Pat can see straightaway where they’re wrong-footed, because they’ve gone head-on instead of aside, but Brian’s pulling them back, trying vainly to slow the pace, and they’re being dragged down in great stuttering drops, the mustang’s hooves catching as it tries to find its feet.

Behind the panic Pat’s in, there’s a very distant part of himself that thinks that Brian and his horse are a perfect match, two stubborn bastards to the last, because he swears he can see the two of them decide to make the jump at the precise same moment, Brian lunging forward as the mustang kicks back, flying off from midway down the ridge and landing on the bank in a great rush of noise and movement.

They land steady, though, hit the ground still running, and Pat heaves a heavy sigh of pure relief when Brian swings down onto the bank, both him and his horse safe and steady on all their feet.

Pat dismounts as well, gives Charlie a fond clap on the flank as he makes his way to Brian. He’s petting up the mustang’s muzzle with shaking hands, soothing in a light voice, murmuring, “Easy, Zuko, easy, bud. We did alright, huh?” He glances at Pat over his shoulder, laughs. “Geez Louise, Patrick, you made that look a damn sight easier than it was.”

Pat shrugs one-shouldered, demurs, “Charlie’s lazy, he just likes the easy way down. Besides, he knows we’re both too old to be pulling stunts like that. Looks like you’re raring to turn yours into a show pony, huh?”

Brian takes the tease for what it is, goes pink and huffs and grins, and goes back to fussing with the harness, adjusting the bit. Pat eyes the mustang, which is tolerating Brian’s affections admirably. “Zuko?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Haven’t heard that one before.”

Brian’s eyes go bright, and he turns himself fully to Pat, keeps one hand proudly on the mustang’s neck. “Yeah, it’s from a story I heard when I was a kid, from some folks passing through town, I can tell it to you later. It makes sense, for him – he’s stubborn and mean and proud, but deep down, he’s a big softie.”

Pat blinks at Zuko, who nearly took a chunk out of Simone’s hand, who bucked Brian five times and would’ve bucked him a sixth if he hadn’t seen a chance to make a break for it, and who seems to be blinking right back at Pat like if only hooves had thumbs, he’d find a revolver and damn well figure out how to use it.

“Sure,” Pat says, dry as bone, “real soft.”

* * *

They’re quick enough about their business on the riverbank, once the excitement’s died down.

Clinging to the edge of the ridge, there’s a little tree poking out from some stray reeds, and Pat hunkers down underneath it with their saddlebags, taking advantage of the scant shade to fuss over how everything’s packed one last time before they cross. He hears Brian walking the horses to the water’s edge to drink, his voice as constant and musical as the rushing water. He’s like a conversation unto himself, Pat thinks, noise following him as sure as a shadow. He murmurs to the horses, to himself – Pat hears a distant splash, and Brian’s voice upticks in surprise, delight, laugh ringing out clear as a bell. He hums in snippets, snatches of private little songs, words lost to the water but tune carried in the air, sinking into Pats bones, making him feel soft, loose, easy.

He shakes himself from his daze, kneeling among the packs and trying to set himself to the task at hand. Truth be told, there’s not much to be done, especially with the river as low as it is; he’s just feeling anxious, impotent, all wringing hands and nothing to do with them. His packing job in the saloon, rushed though it was, is passable, and Brian’s packed light enough that so long as he keeps his pack hefted high on his shoulders, he should come out of it mostly safe and dry. In any case, he’s a little wary of going rummaging through Brian’s things, so he just goes right back to tugging on his own straps, worrying over nothing.

He’s caught out of the corner of his eye, the sudden flash of sunlight on metal in his pack, and abruptly his worries coalescence, turn solid, real and heavy as a loaded gun in the hand. He stands slowly, groans quietly as his knees and back make their protests known – God almighty, he feels a thousand years old – and walks his way back to the river’s edge. He steps a little more surely now that he’s got an idea in the back of his mind; he could probably use that outcrop over there, sure, and so long as the horses are tied up a fair distance away it shouldn’t spook them too badly, and he’ll feel better knowing, if worst comes to worst– 

Brian’s sat some paces away from the horses, and for a few moments, he stops Pat’s mind right in its tracks, every frantic thought settling into a sigh, into  _ God, he’s something, ain’t he?  _

The last time Pat had been in New York, he’d passed by some shops that were offering some new portrait fad, little daguerreotypes captured on film, and he’d snorted at it, at the time, tourist nonsense, but he understands the appeal now, he thinks. Brian’s pulled off his boots, rolled his trousers up to his knees so he can dip his feet in the water, and he’s leaning back on his palms, head thrown back and eyes slipped shut, looking so utterly himself that Pat wants to keep him like that forever, some tangible proof that this moment existed, quiet and beautiful.

Maybe, when all this is over, Brian will let Pat take him northeast, to see the sights, and will humour Pat at a portrait shop, might think it’s all novel and exciting. That way, Pat’ll have a piece of him, folded and secreted away in his pack and his chest, once Brian leaves, goes home or moves on to big cities and bright lights, something he can take out and worry over and gnaw at on sleepless nights on the road, when he’s exhausted and alone.

He’s loath to take Brian from his peace, but his footsteps must betray him – Brian glances up over his shoulder, eyes half-lidded, humming a wordless question.

“You’re going to be taking a pretty big dip in a little while,” Pat points out, nodding to where Brian’s dangling in the water. “Not much point to getting wet beforehand.”

Brian smiles, languid, and kicks his legs a little, wiggling his toes. “Just testing the water,” he says. “That way the cold won’t surprise me. It’s nice, Patrick, maybe you oughta sit down a while.” He pats the ground next to him, looks at him in a way that Pat supposes is meant to be enticing, but just makes him snort softly. Much as the thought is nice – sitting on the bank, cool water rushing between his sore toes, Brian pressed against his side – he’s not sure his knees will survive another descent so soon. Besides, he wandered over with a purpose, and the heavy stone of worry in his gut won’t let him forget it.

“Can you shoot?” he asks, loud and abrupt, terse even to his own ears. 

Brian blinks, cocks his head, surprise and caution tempering his voice when he replies, “Sure, we keep a shotgun on the ranch for pests, coyotes and the like, and I can use it just fine.”

Pat shifts his weight unhappily, frowns. “Buckshot then,” he clarifies, “Not pistols?”

Brian frowns right back at him, confusion evident in the drawn line of his mouth. “No? We keep my Pa’s revolver in a box on the mantle, but I was never allowed to touch it.”

Pat nods, jerks his head towards the tree. “Come on, and get the horses tied up.”

After a few moments of jumping up and struggling back into his boots, Brian follows wordlessly, but with about twenty different questions written on his face, in the tense jaunt to his step, the way his fingers stutter as he ties Zuko to one of the lower branches. Pat does the same for Charlie, feels far too aware of Brian’s eyes on him as he leans down to go digging in his pack, pulling out the revolver carefully. He leads Brian to the far edge of the bank, to a little outcrop of rocks that’s reasonably flat on the top, enough for Pat to prop one of the canteens – about ten years old and most of the way to falling apart besides – on top of it.

“You oughta learn to shoot this gun,” Pat says, holding up the revolver.

Brian’s got his hands braced on his hips, watching Pat from a short distance, and he laughs a little, says, “Geez, Patrick, I don’t– Well–” He hesitates, and despite the smile, genuine nerves creep into his voice. “Maybe I oughta have asked this a little earlier, but are we expecting to get into a gunfight, on this trip?”

_ You should’ve asked,  _ Pat should say, but doesn’t.  _ You can still go, before we cross, last chance to turn back.  _ He’s too busy being privately pleased at the way Brian says  _ we,  _ too busy quickly reassuring, “No, nothing like that. But you don’t know what kind of trouble could pop up, and I’d feel better knowing you could take care of yourself if I can’t–”

_ What,  _ his mind sneers,  _ protect him? Because you’ve got such a stellar record in that department, friend,  _ and it’s not even Clay’s voice, this time, just Pat’s own conscience, biting and furious. 

_ If you wanted to protect him, you’d have left him back home, where he was safe from you. _

Brian seems to steel himself, before nodding sharply at Pat, determination writ large on his face. “Alright, Pat Gill. Teach me how to win a quick draw.”

Pat walks a few paces from the outcrop, towards where Brian’s standing, aligning himself with his makeshift target. Brian accommodates him, falling easily into the space at Pat’s elbow, watching just over his shoulder.

“Quick draw’s a whole different set of skills,” Pat drawls, as he clicks out the cylinder, counts his bullets. “If you can get both hands on a gun and bring it all the way up to aim, you’ve got a far better chance of shooting straight.” He decides to refrain from mentioning that he shoots mainly one-handed, and from the hip – in other words, quick draw style.  _ Bad habits,  _ Clayton says. So long as Pat’s got Brian fresh and new, he may as well teach him right.

“I’ll shoot once, tell you what I’m doing, then you’ll have a go until you’re getting it right. Alright?”

Brian nods his assent, so Pat flicks the cylinder back in, raises the gun to line up his shot.

“With rifles and shotguns, you hold them to the cheek, so you aim down the side of the barrel a little, even if you don’t mean to. Revolvers, you aim down the top, and it’s not scattershot, so you need to be a little more precise.” Pat holds himself deliberately still as he narrates, trying to be demonstrative with how he’s pointing the gun, steady and loose.

“Don’t want to give your hands a chance to get tired, they’ll start shaking. As soon as you’ve got your shot lined up, take it.” And he does so, quick and familiar, one finger, pull, click,  _ boom.  _

The shot rings loud, briefly deafening, but he can hear the horses screeching faintly off behind him, and then, closer, a whistle by his ear, low and impressed.

“Well, damn, Pat Gill,” Brian says, giddy, “I reckon you might be a crackshot!”

Pat dips his head, uneasy under the praise, but he feels pride swell in his chest when he spots the waterskin, lying off to the side of the outcrop and dribbling water into the dirt from a puncture right in the middle of it.

Brian goes bounding towards the outcrop, all enthusiasm all of a sudden, and replaces the canteen atop the rock. He trots back to Pat, holds out his hands expectantly, and Pat acquiesces with a smile and a raised eyebrow, handing over the revolver downgrade, grip-first. They trade off their earlier positions, Brian raising the gun at the target, Pat at his shoulder, watching him. He frowns when he sees Brian squinting against the sun, now high overhead bearing down on them. 

“Where’s your hat?” Pat asks, realizing now that Brian hadn’t been wearing it that morning either, that Pat hadn’t seen hide nor hair of it since last night when he’d dropped Brian off at the ranch house, hanging from a cord around his neck.

Brian lowers the gun, glances sidelong at Pat, sheepish. “I don’t have it,” he admits softly. “It wasn’t really mine, anyways, it was my dad’s, and I couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to it out here.”

Pat’s chest clenches in sympathy. He understands, honest, he does, but– well, the kid’s face is already pink around the cheeks from riding under the sun all morning, and he’ll never learn to shoot straight if he can’t see what he’s shooting at. Pat only really decides what he’s going to do as he’s doing it, plucking his hat off his own head and depositing it on Brian’s in one quick motion. Brian jumps, makes a small sound of surprise, but adjusts admirably, reaching up one-handed to tug at the brim until the hat’s settled nicely on his head, and he’s blinking back down at the target, clear-eyed now.

He sets up his shot again, with a little more confidence this time, but he glances back at Pat, unsure, asking. Pat just nods down at the target, a silent instruction to shoot. He probably won’t be able to tell what Brian’s doing wrong until he’s already done it, and then Pat can train him out of it. Just looking though, Pat can already guess at a problem; Brian’s arms are sagging a little under the weight of the revolver, aim unsteady and dipping. Despite being heavier than the average handgun, being braced against a shoulder made a shotgun a damn sight easier to steady, and Pat would bet that Brian’s wrists and forearms aren’t used to doing all the work.

After a moment, Brian suddenly raises the barrel up and shoots, two sharp cracks that make them both flinch, one from the gunshot itself, and another as the bullet hits off the rock face at the base of the canteen.

Brian’s arms drop, his shoulders sagging, and he huffs, clearly disappointed. 

“Alright,” Pat says, genuinely impressed. “Not bad, for your first shot.”

Brian turns to look at him, silently incredulous. 

“I’m serious!” Pat insists. “You were right underneath where you needed to be, so you don’t need to worry about spread, just how high you’re aiming. And if you were shooting at a person, that wouldn’t matter – so long as you go right for the chest, a little bit up or down won’t make a difference, it’ll still hit ‘em just fine. Give it another go, I’ll put you in a better spot.”

Steeling himself towards the target, Brian raises the gun again, and Pat eyes him critically for a moment, before saying, “The problem is, you’re aiming against the barrel, not straight down it. You’re trying to guess where it actually is, instead of where it looks like you’re pointing it.” The words don’t make sense coming out of his mouth, and he can’t find a way to explain that Brian’s aiming the revolver like a shotgun, and it’s not going to work.

Brian looks as frustrated as Pat feels, staring down at his hands in confusion, before eventually looking up at Pat. “Show me?” he asks, and it’s half a challenge somehow, and Pat doesn’t know what he’s stepping up to precisely, just that he’s most certainly going to do it, powerless to resist.

Slowly, deliberately, he steps into Brian’s space, close at his back, the way Brian approaches his horses – gives him plenty of time to startle, to go tense and sharp. He doesn’t, though, seems to sway back into Pat, even, and after a moment’s hesitation, Pat fits himself to Brian’s back entirely, one leg between his, arms coming up around to mirror Brian’s, and he ducks in under the brim of his hat to hook his chin over Brian’s shoulder, press against his cheek, so he can look down his sightline. Brian shivers, imperceptibly, but pressed together from hip to head the way they are, Pat  _ feels  _ it, shuddering against his shoulders.

He curls his fingers around Brian’s on the grip of the revolver, skin brushing metal, and he steadies the barrel, squeezing Brian’s hands as he speaks, voice low. “The problem,” he repeats, “is that you were aiming against the side of the barrel – going by what you think it was pointing at, instead of what you could see over top of it. So you aimed too low. This is about right. Do you see where I’m looking?”

Brian – oh  _ God  _ – tilts his head up, so Pat’s nose, lips, slide down his jaw, brush the soft skin of his neck, bared and close and  _ hot,  _ hotter somehow than the singing gunmetal burning his fingertips, and Pat shouldn’t  _ do  _ this, shouldn’t press, make it seem like he only took Brian along to get something out of him when Brian was probably just looking for an easy out, might be willing to give too much to get it–

“I see,” Brian murmurs, and shoots.

The canteen goes flying, of course it does, and Pat feels more than sees the wide grin that stretches Brian’s face, feels more than sees the way he sinks, boneless and satisfied into Pat’s arms, head dropping back against Pat’s shoulder, neck still open and pressed to Pat’s open lips, and his voice hums, stuttering at the faint graze of teeth, into Pat’s mouth, when he says, “And how was  _ that,  _ Pat Gill?”

And Pat’s caught, still, utterly and helplessly enraptured, and he smiles, sharp against Brian’s jaw, and says, “Better.”

* * *

Pat kneels by the river to refill their remaining waterskins before they cross, and takes the excuse to splash some water on his face, takes a few deep breaths.

He’s –  _ Lord,  _ he’s not a gentleman by  _ any  _ stretch of the word, but he feels pushed to the edges of his own frayed sense of propriety, trying desperately to slow his own descent, before he does something he’s going to regret. Something Brian is going to regret.

He stands, canteens in hand, and shakes himself. For now, all he has to do is get them across the river, heading south. That much, he should be able to manage. 

Brian’s already saddled up when Pat walks back to their little camp, smiling down at him and reaching out a hand for his canteen. Pat hands it over and swings up onto Charlie, turns to face the river ahead of them. There’s always a danger to this sort of thing, a misplaced hoof leading to a broken leg leading to a drowning horse leading to a drowning rider, and Pat’s heard the stories and seen more than a few besides, but – well. There’s a thrill to it, too, the rush of the current and aching muscles and being forced to push onwards or fall under. Brian’s shifting atop his horse, leaning forward to look out at the opposite bank, and his anticipation’s infectious, makes Pat smile just a bit, when he asks, “You ready?”

Brian hears the challenge in his voice and squares his shoulders, gestures theatrically towards the water. “After you, Patrick.”

He urges Charlie into the water smoothly enough, waits in the shallows for Brian to follow after him. 

The problem, Pat supposes, with taking a wild horse on a trip like this, is that the wild horse has likely crossed a few rivers in its time, and is fairly certain that it knows what to do about one better than the person perched on its back. Brian yelps as his mustang pushes heavily into the water, one hand uselessly on the reins and the other atop his head, keeping his borrowed hat firmly in place. Pat laughs, despite himself, pushes Charlie on after the two of them. The water rushes up around his waist, soaking through his trousers, but he hardly feels the cold, can’t afford to get caught up in it besides, has to keep his eyes ahead, get to the other side. Charles is wading now, and Pat keeps his reins steady, nice and easy, everyone calm. Up ahead, some wild splashing and heavy hoofsteps announces Brian and Zuko’s arrival on the opposite bank.

Brian’s turned around and waiting for him when Charlie’s hooves finally hit solid ground, and they step, dripping, onto shore. He’s still got one hand on his hat, head tilted back, smile on his face. 

“Nice of you to join us before sunset, Patrick,” he greets, tipping the brim down to Pat in a patronizing little hello. 

Pat snorts. “You calling me a slowpoke just ‘cause I didn’t decide to take a horse that’d try to drown the both of us?” He puts Charlie into a trot, following some faded tracks up a worn slope towards where the cattle trails will meet up with the main road towards Paloma. It’ll be safer to ride a little ways away from the road, he reckons, aside it but just far enough off that there’ll be less chance of running into unwanted company.

Brian pulls up aside him, once they’ve cleared the bank. “Now, I ain’t necessarily calling you a slowpoke,” he says airily, “but I’m just saying that if maybe I was with someone a little more young and spry…”

Pat barks a laugh, and leans over, cuffing him lightly on the back of the head. Brian squawks as his hat goes right off his head, and Pat snatches it out of his hands, puts it back atop his own head where it belongs. Brian scowls at him, but there’s too much of a smile in it, and they end up laughing at each other, just a bit, and it’s childish enough that Pat thinks he’d be a bit embarrassed of it in polite company, but out here, with Brian, he’s hardly of a mind to be self-conscious at all.

Brian glances back at the river, then to Pat. “Are we not stopping to change?”

Pat blinks. “Change?”

“We’re soaking wet, Pat.” Which is true enough. Pat’s soaked through to just above the belt, and Brian’s suffered a little more, what with all the thrashing he and his mustang did, more or less everything but his hair wet. But- they’ve already stopped once today, and Pat would rather keep going until they’re forced to rest, so he shakes his head.

“No time, we’ll keep on while there’s still sunlight.”

Brian pouts, every bit a younger brother, whining, “But Patrick, I’m freezing!”

Pat fights to keep the smile off his face as he replies obstinately, “The sun will dry you off just fine. And hey, maybe if you weren’t travelling with such an old slowpoke, you’d be making good enough time to stop and change into dry clothes.”

Brian laughs, leans over to throw a half-hearted slap that Pat bats away, retaliates by reaching out to muss his hat-flattened hair. Brian rides away in a huff for a while, for that one, pulling Zuko ahead and shooting a betrayed look over his shoulder.

Pat’s used enough to the quiet, on the trail, and is happy enough to settle into his thoughts as they settle into the pace of the ride. He’d been travelling alone since the last time he’d seen Clay, and even with the two of them, they’d always inhabited a friendly sort of silence, on the road. Clay liked to point out birds, when he spotted them, and they’d chatter, if they had something new worth chattering about, but for the most part, they were neither of them chattering people.

Brian’s comfortable silence lasts all of, Pat would guess, a quarter of an hour. The sun’s still high and bright over them in the cloudless sky, and they’re not feeling the cold of their wet clothes so much anymore, though Pat’s desperately looking forward to when he can change into underclothes that aren’t quite so damp. Brian’s leaned back in his saddle, a hum rising in his throat, some vaguely familiar tune that threatens to catch in Pat’s mind, though he can’t place it until Brian starts to sing.

_ Come all you jolly cowmen, don’t you want to go,  
_ _ Way up on the Kansas line?  
_ _ Where you whoop up the cattle from morning till night,  
_ _ All out in the midnight rain. _

Pat’s laughing by the end of the verse, both at the godawful accent Brian’s affected, and the song itself. “No,” he says between breaths, “that’s terrible, and so old, and where did you even  _ hear  _ that? I have never  _ whooped  _ cattle a day in my life, and neither have you.”

Brian frowns thoughtfully, and shakes his head. “ _ Line  _ and  _ rain  _ is an atrocious slant rhyme.” Then, he takes a deep breath, and starts up again, sending Pat into new fits.

_ The cowboy’s life is a dreadful life, _ _   
_ _ He’s driven through heat and cold; _ _   
_ _ I’m almost froze with the water on my clothes, _ _   
_ _ A-ridin’ through heat and cold. _

Brian falls into laughter, shaking his head at Pat. “Damn, I don’t know the next verse. I only remember the first two!” Pat laughs back at him, and then thinks,  _ oh, I know how it goes,  _ and before he can think the better of it, he’s opening his fool mouth. 

_ I’ve been where the lightnin’, the lightnin’ tangled in my eyes, _ _   
_ _ The cattle I could scarcely hold–  _

His voice sounds like a plow being dragged across stone, and he can’t hold a tune to save his damn life, but Brian looks utterly delighted, and it pushes him through the rest of the verse.

_ Think I heard my boss man say:  
_ _ “I want all brave-hearted men who ain’t afraid to die,  
_ _ To whoop up the cattle from morning till night,  
_ _ Way up on the Kansas line.” _

Brian joins in on the last line, loud and grinning, and he drags Pat through the entire rest of that godawful song like that, and with his voice high and clear like it is it almost makes Pat sound not half bad. By the time they’re at the last chorus, they’re shouting at the top of their lungs, some kind of half-formed contest that neither of them are winning, every other word a wheezed laugh.

_ –I’m almost froze with the water on my clothes,  
_ _ Way up on the Kansas Line! _

Pat shakes his head, as they finally trail off into silence. He’s glad they’re well off the beaten path, because lord, that calamity probably could’ve been heard from a mile off, but his cheeks are aching from grinning, and Brian’s giving him that look again, the one like Pat’s the best damn thing to ride into town since bacon and eggs, and all he can do is smile right back like Brian’s brighter than the sun over his head.

* * *

By dusk, the desert is washed in amber as the sun sinks below the horizon, and Pat’s about ready to gnaw his own hand off. They’ve been chewing on jerky from their packs as they rode, but it’s no substitute for a meal, and Pat’s eager to set up camp so they can get a can of something heating up on a fire.

Pat takes them a little eastwards, to an outcrop by some shrubs he’s been eyeing. It’s as secluded as they’re going to get, out here in the open desert, and the rock face should block most of the light of their fire from the main road. It’s a sign of how worn out they are that they’re both silent as they dismount, even Brian only huffing through his nose as he stretches. Pat allows himself a few moments to roll his aching shoulders, scrub a hand over his tired eyes, before he sets off on stiff legs for some firewood. By the time he’s back with an armful enough to sustain them the evening, the last of the sunlight is fading fast, sapping the heat of the day with it, and he has to blink to spot Brian perched atop a rock, waiting for him.

In that same weary, worn-out silence, they kneel in the cracked, dusty dirt, fiddling with branches and kindling and matches, cupping their hands around glowing embers and blowing softly until a flame finally catches and slowly starts to spread. They sit back on their haunches, satisfied, muzzily watching the fire grow and the warmth with it. Brian squints, makes an odd face, and mumbles, “I think my clothes are still wet.”

“Mmm,” Pat hums in agreement. Now that the fire is starting to heat his face, the chill of the damp fabric clinging to his legs is all the more uncomfortable. He rises with a groan in the back of his throat, every bone in his body creaking together in a symphony of pure discomfort. Brian stands more fluidly, though there’s a ginger bowleggedness to his walk as he follows Pat to their packs that speaks to his own aches and pains. 

They change quickly, returning to the safety of the fire as they peel themselves out of their underclothes and pull on blessedly more dry ones. Pat’s got a shamelessness borne of long weeks on the road, him and Clay losing all sense of modesty over years of dipping in rivers together, sweating shirtless under a sweltering summer sun, sharing clothes and just about everything else besides, but – he finds himself half-turned from Brian as he hops one-footed into his trousers, avoiding his eyes, avoiding his skin, laid bare to the uneven, flickering light. Feels his face burning, despite the chill at his back.

Beans, they decide, after rummaging through their food from the general store, and some bread with it, a loaf that’ll go stale soon enough if they don’t eat it. They lay out Pat’s bedroll, sit themselves comfortably on it and watch the can cooking in the fire with the ravenous enthusiasm that only the truly trail-hungry can ever manage.

After a while, Brian shifts on his haunches and lies back on the ground, laces his hands behind his head. He’s blinking slowly up at the stars, eyes half-lidded, and Pat watches something in his face settle, soft and content.

“It’s so quiet out here,” he murmurs eventually, turning his head to Pat without quite taking his eyes from the sky. 

Pat sits forward, leans his forearms on his knees. “Your town ain’t too busy, it must be quiet enough when you’re at home.”

Brian gives a half-shrug, says, “Sure, I reckon it’s not busy the way a city’s busy in the night, but – it’s different. There’s other folks in the house all breathing, plus the dog, the horses, the cattle near enough. it all feels so much closer. This is more…” He lifts a hand, waves it vaguely, and Pat’s not entirely sure how to take all of this, but then Brian’s smiling hazily, eyes shining in the half-light. “I like it out here.”

“Oh,” Pat says, rough, his tongue feels dumb, and he absently wishes he’d taken up smoking, because his hands are twitching for something to do other than reach over and  _ touch, _ run his fingers through Brian’s hair, fit the curve of his jaw to Pat’s palm again and press in close in the dark.

He busies himself with their dinner again, pulls the beans from the fire and passes Brian a spoon and his half of the bread, and just like that it’s gone again, the surge of  _ want  _ and the insidious constant temptation to  _ take,  _ as they put themselves to the task of filling their stomachs, barely pausing to swallow between mouthfuls. Brian closes his eyes and moans around his spoon, and Pat quite sharply tells himself not to stare.

“I know it’s not one of Jenna’s dinners…” he jokes weakly, once he’s swallowed his own bite. After a moment, Brian opens his eyes and blinks at him, unimpressed.

“Pat Gill,” he says, with utter sincerity, “I love these beans more than I love my own mother, in this moment.”

As the fire starts to dim to embers, Pat turns his mind to the night ahead. Brian’s not packed a bedroll; not surprising, considering the harried escape they made from the town, and Pat’ll look out for one for him in Paloma, along with a hat of his own. In the meantime, though, it’d probably be best to set up a watch, one man sitting on the edge of the outcrop with the revolver, watching for any sign of trouble, while the other catches a few hours of sleep. He tells Brian as much, as well as his intention to take the first watch, which gets him a flat look as a response.

“I’ll take the first watch, Pat, you oughta get some rest,” he insists, and he’s got a jut to his chin that keeps Pat from arguing; he doesn’t trust Brian not to stay up half the night with him out of sheer stubbornness. Besides, now that the option of sleep has presented itself, exhaustion is seeping deep into his bones, sweat and trail dust and weariness sitting tacky on his skin, and the call of the bedroll must be answered. So he acquiesces to Brian’s dogged determination without much fuss, just fetches him the gun, sets him up at a good vantage point to see the main road, insists that Brian wake him up in a few hours.

“I mean it,” he says, stern, to Brian’s airy agreement. “You fall asleep on your horse tomorrow, I’m tying you to him and sending you both right back home.”

Brian just grins, rests the revolver gingerly on his knee. “You ain’t getting rid of me that easy, Pat Gill. get some sleep.”

Pat, eager to get out of the night chill, briskly pulls off his boots and slips into the bedroll, letting himself settle comfortably under the familiar weight of the rough wool blankets. Pat’s met sailors who never slept well on land; they were only really at ease with the rocking of waves under their backs and the smell of salt and fish up their noses. Pat knows the feeling, thinks the desert might be his ocean, the vast open sky stretching above him, hard ground below. It’s the kind of rough living that’s done in his back, and ruined real beds for him forever. He always feels a little more trapped with a roof over his head, always tosses and turns when he can’t hear the soft crack of a dying fire nearby, the chuffing breaths of Charlie grazing some errant weeds from the ground.

Despite his heavy, stinging-tired eyes and the warmth slowly bleeding back into his fingers, though, he’s not sinking into sleep, and he turns on his side, grunts in frustration, blinks sorely into the dim night. There’s a twitching anxiousness sitting insistently in his chest, a worry he can’t shake, and it’s about Clay, yes, about what lies ahead of them and what they’ve left in their wake, but it’s Brian too, that encroaching dread that they’ve made a mistake, the one that Pat kept nipping at their heels while they were riding, the one that’s snapping at his throat now that he’s stopped to let it in.

And then there’s – it feels like he can’t close his eyes without thinking about the kiss, Brian hot and singing and so, so alive against him, fingertips dancing on his skin and teeth scraping on his lips–

He turns again, cranes his head to see where Brian’s sat against the outcrop. He’s wide-eyed, staring near-unblinking towards the main road in the distance, fingers fretting anxiously against the grip of the revolver, and he looks high-strung, scared. The right thing to do, Pat thinks, would be to push and prod and browbeat the kid until he agreed to take the bedroll, let Pat take the watch, and let him sleep as long as he pleased. The right thing to do would be to turn him right back around and send him home. The right thing to do would’ve been to never have taken him along in the first place.

Guilt curling heavy in his stomach, Pat calls over, voice rough. “Alright, come on.”

Brian startles, blinks owlishly over at him. “Pat?”

Pat pushes himself up on one elbow, running a hand through his hair. “We’re both too tired out for a waking watch, and I’m used to travelling alone anyways. Just come on and we’ll share the bed, and both of us’ll get some sleep for the ride tomorrow.”

Brian stands slowly, starts to pick his way across camp towards Pat, but he’s glancing between the revolver in his hands and the road behind him. “And it’ll be safe?” he asks.

Pat shrugs, nods. “Sure. Like I said, I’ve been riding alone lately. I’m a light enough sleeper, and I’ll keep the gun by my head, alright?”  _ Anyways, if some folks really want us dead in our sleep,  _ he does not say,  _ one man sitting around with a revolver ain’t going to do much.  _ It is perhaps not the reassurance that Brian is looking for.

A moment’s more hesitation, but he nods sharply, makes for Pat and the bedroll, hands over the gun and starts tugging off his boots. 

Pat’s shared his bed with men before, both by necessity and by choice, and over the years he and Clayton have spent more than a few bitterly cold nights curled around each other in the same bedroll, pressed close in to each other’s heat. Yet– he can’t help, as Brian quickly shuffles into the bedroll with him, lies down mostly atop him, curled against his side, getting the distinct feeling that someone has poured some gunpowder into his ear and dropped a lit match into his mouth. They’re as close as they were on the riverbank, pressed together from leg to chest, as close as they were when Pat kissed him, hair tickling his nose and soft skin against his hands.

“Goodnight, Pat,” Brian murmurs, drowsy and slow in a way that says he’s half to sleep already. Pat’s feeling close enough himself, and as Brian shifts against him, rests his head against Pat’s chest and curls under the eight of Pat’s arm around his back, the fear and the doubt and the sneering voice of his own damn conscience fades past the steady rise and fall of Brian’s chest against his.

“Night, Brian.”

* * *

Pat opens his eyes to the soft blue sky of the hours before dawn, waking from a dream he only half-remembers to Brian’s nose jutting into his neck and a thigh between his legs, pressing right against his cock.

“Mornin’ Patrick,” Brian says, sleep-slow and quiet against his skin, and Pat thinks,  _ Shit,  _ because it’s all too close, Brian up against him like this, and it feels like with every breath he moves, just slightly, rubbing against him in small little circles that make him want to  _ cry.  _

“How,” Pat says, and his throat is dry, voice strained, “How’d you know I was awake?”

And there’s a laugh in Brian’s voice when he says, “You stopped moving.”

Shame floods him at the thought that he’s been rubbing off on Brian in his sleep like a rutting dog, and he opens his mouth, an apology already forming itself, but then Brian pushes himself up on his hands and knees over Pat, takes his thigh away, and abruptly bereft, all that comes out of Pat is a quiet, reedy whine.

Brian hovers close over Pat, hair hanging in a curtain around his face, brushing Pat’s cheek as he leans down. His eyes are soft, clear, and he’s mussed from sleep, flushed pink and half-smiling and Pat is staring dumbly, he knows, but he can’t quite make himself come back to his own senses. 

“You haven’t kissed me, since we left,” he murmurs, and Pat’s helpless, is drifting his hands across the thighs on either side of his even as he stutters back, “I didn’t want to – to impose, to make it seem like you had to–”

And Brian’s moving under his hands, muscles flexing, shifting as he leans forward, just nearly pressing his forehead to Pat’s, and there’s a sudden twinge of worry to his face, soft and insecure in a way that makes Pat want to lift a thumb to his face, smooth the crease from between his eyebrows, press the frown from the corners of his mouth.

“But you wanted to?” Brian asks, suddenly softer, suddenly younger–

And Pat chokes out, “Of course. Of _course.” _He’s awed that Brian could ever doubt that he’s the best and brightest thing Pat’s ever seen, that Pat’s wanted him every which way from the first minute he saw him, that if Pat never made him smile again for the rest of his life he’d be happy because he still made him smile _once, _and it was the best damn thing he’d ever managed to do.

Brian bears down on Pat slow, like he’s scared of spooking him – rests one hand flat on his shoulder, brings the other up to drift fingers against his cheek, brush aside the hair at his temple, and he bumps their noses together, says against Pat’s lips, “Tell me to stop.”

Pat’s hands go to Brian’s waist of their own accord, gripping, and his shirt’s rucked up in his sleep, so Pat digs his thumb into the bare skin of his hip, feels Brian lurch forward against him, breathing sharply. “I’m not going to do that,” Pat says, raw, stripped as bare as he’s ever been, and he finds Brian’s eyes and just  _ stares,  _ and waits, and kisses back when he is kissed, suddenly and brutally and beautifully hard.

One of Brian’s hands has tangled itself in his hair, gripping tight and holding him steady as he’s kissed, and he’s considering asking if it would like to take up residence there, but the other is – sliding down from his shoulder, pressing hard against Pat through his trousers, and then he’s groaning into Brian’s open mouth, jolting at the sudden touch, hands spasming against Brian’s sides. He slips one hand up Brian’s shirt unthinkingly, presses the rough pads of his fingers to soft, burning skin, scratches fingernails bluntly down his back to feel the way Brian rocks forward into him, breaking away from Pat to make a breathy sound against the corner of his mouth. Pat can only barely see where Brian’s hard in his trousers, but feels the brush of his knuckles against it when he moves his hand, and he says, broken, “Can I– Please–” 

And Brian nods, says, “Yes, whatever you want, it’s yes, please,  _ please–”  _ and breaks into a keening high in his throat as Pat presses the heel of his hand into Brian’s cock, lets him grind up into Pat’s palm.

“Out, now,” Brian says, quick fingers already going for Pat’s buttons, and he can’t agree more, tries to get his thoughts in order long enough to help Brian out, but soon enough they’re scattered all over again because he’s got himself and Brian in hand, and with every shift of his hips Brian rubs up against him, pushing into the circle of his fingers, and Pat’s groaning against Brian’s throat, openmouthed and urgent.

It occurs to Pat, somewhere in his heat-heavy mind, to spit on his palm to ease the way, and then they’re well and truly off, and Brian’s got his eyes screwed shut like he’s in pain, mouth open and working as he pushes a hurried rhythm, blindly chasing his pleasure. Pat’s – lord, he thinks he’s just along for the ride, at this point, caught up in the flush high on Brian’s cheeks, the soft little noises in his throat, the sheer weight of him against Pat, and he’s too close already for this to last long, the unsteady cant of Brian’s hips says he might be near enough as well, and Pat,  _ wants,  _ and for the moment is content to  _ take,  _ reaches up a hand to curl tight in Brian’s hair again, tugs him down to kiss him, and Brian goes to him easy, presses himself along Pat like he belongs there, and he’s gasping shallow breaths against him when he spills into Pat’s hand. Pat follows quick enough, pushed to the edge by Brian’s insistent pace, and for a few moments, he thinks absolutely nothing at all, just  _ breathes,  _ lets it all wash over him like a cresting wave on a shore.

After a time, they pull apart, the bedroll too small to sustain them for long in such a state, and Pat digs around the packs for a bandana, wets it for the two of them to clean themselves off. 

Trails breed routines, and they fall into theirs quick and easy, padding around the campsite in a comfortable sort of quiet as Pat gathers their things, scatters the fire, and Brian tends to the horses. Brian takes up a hum as he works, soft and absentminded and vaguely familiar, and it takes Pat a moment to place it as the song he was singing with Jonah in the saloon. He keeps catching himself smiling a little dopily, can’t quite keep it off his lips, and he’s got this gentle little affection sitting light in his chest, unfurling a little more every time he glances over and catches Brian’s eyes, bright and open.

With two pairs of hands working, they’re ready to saddle up quick enough, the sun barely creeping over the horizon as Pat leads them back towards the trail. The desert stretches long before them, quiet and wild, and Pat shifts in his saddle, prepares for the long ride ahead, sees Brian do much the same at his side. He pulls some biscuits from one of the saddlebags, hands a couple to Brian to chew on, tells him, “If we can ride steady most of today and the next without stopping, we’ll reach Paloma by tomorrow evening, most likely. Sleep the night in a proper bed, I reckon, then start poking around for Clayton in the morning.”

“A proper bed?” Brian echoes, most of the way to a tease in his grin, the glint of his eyes. “Why  _ Patrick.”  _ Pat goes a little hot around the cheeks, struck suddenly by the thought of Brian underneath him, hair spread wild on a pillow, pretty pink flush crawling down from his cheeks to spread across his neck, his chest–

And he can’t quite help being pulled to Brian’s smile, feels an answering one tugging at his mouth, and he lets himself look at Brian, lets his eyes linger on the line of his throat, imagines putting his teeth to it. “Yeah,” he says eventually, “I reckon a proper bed would do us nicely.”

* * *

They make good time that day, in Pat’s opinion, only stopping for a short while midday when they come across a stream, taking a rest to water themselves and the horses and gnaw on the last of their jerky.

“It’s biscuits and beans, from now on,” Pat tells Brian seriously, breaks and laughs openly when Brian throws a hand to his forehead, laments, “Ah, we shall surely starve.”

They fall in and out of chatter, an easy cadence Pat can’t recall having with someone before, but Brian is a wellspring of odd little thoughts that he spouts throughout the day, stories from his home, or stories he’s heard from travelers passing through, the kind Pat’s never thought to ask of the folks he’s met, the kind he’s never had to tell. He prods Pat for stories too, despite the insistence that he’s got no good ones, that he and Clay were boring folks who did boring work, that everyone else Pat’s ever known has been a bastard with no redeemable words to their names. He wants to know about Pat’s home, his family, any number of things he’s hardly thought about for years now–

“What was Maine like?” He asks, and he’s got Pat’s hat on again, snatched from behind with a grin.

Pat, brushing sweat-limp hair from his face, thinks for a moment. Truth be told, he’d been ten years old when he’s followed his father southwest, and his memories of home are hazy, impressions of smells and sounds, his mother’s singing voice, the creak of his bedroom window opening, sticky fingers touching as he and a schoolfriend shared stolen sweets. Compared with Brian’s stories, a childhood of a thousand little adventures, a town of folks close enough to be family and strange enough besides, Pat’s just not sure he’s got much to offer in return. So he just shrugs, says shortly, “Cold.”

–But Pat finds himself finding stories, ways he and Clay have managed to make fools of themselves from here to California, some of the odder folks they’ve met over the years, a half-lifetime he’s kept well enough to himself spilling out onto the road for a chance to make Brian laugh.

Of course, their peace lasts as long as the sun. They’re edging closer and closer to civilization, and even off the main road, they’ve started to run into other folks, cattle rustlers heading northwards with a herd, families hanging off of rickety wagons, lone travelers keeping their own business, and Brian is cheery, consummately polite, nods his head and tips his hat and calls out a hello like the proper young gentleman that he is. Pat, though, doesn’t meet their eyes, finds himself quite abruptly and oddly wary of being recognized. It had been too easy to forget, riding tight along with Brian, open road and empty skies, that he had left San Antonio at a gallop with trouble at his heels, that it might catch up with him at any given hour. He should’ve known their good mood wouldn’t keep, the way no good things ever quite keep for him, and by nightfall he’s tense and on-edge, fingers itching and mind stuck on the revolver tucked in his pack, and Brian’s gone quiet and inwards, every now and again catching Pat with an odd stare that he can’t place, but doesn’t too much like.

Tonight there’s no question of a watch; Brian slips into the bedroll with him silently, tucks himself close against his chest, hums when Pat curls an arm around his back and hums some more when he allows his own nervous hands and starts to card fingers through his hair. He’s in a tossing-and-turning sort of mood, staring wearily up at the stars, stomach turning in an aching, heavy, guilting sort of way. His mind’s stuck on Clayton, on San Antonio, on the creak of the rope swinging from the gallows, on the heavy smell of blood soaking into the dust.

“Pat?” Brian says, soft and flat against his chest, and it’s not a question, not really, not with the way he’s asking it.

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s remembering now, Brian pressed close behind him, arms around his waist, speaking soft to his back, things that are easier to say in the dark, things that are easier to say when you don’t have to look a man in the eye.

“What happened to you and Clayton? Why all of this?” Why the running, he means, why the fear and guilt and trigger-twitchy fingers, the money and the quiet and the stubborn, horrid sense of dread that hands around Pat’s shoulders like the pelt of some strange beast.

His fingers still in Brian’s hair, and he lets out a sharp breath.  _ All of it, this time,  _ he thinks,  _ make the damn words come, let them run dry in your mouth, he deserves to know the whole thing, deserves to know who he’s thrown his lot in with. _

“Clay and I, we met on a job years ago,” he starts, talking to the sky more than anything, easier that way, somehow. “We got along well enough, decided we’d prefer to travel alone together than just alone, and we’ve been working with each other since. But there’s been trouble on the road north of here, lately, so the last couple months, we’d kept safe by picking up a third –  _ Nick.”  _ He spits the name, and it’s still sour on his tongue.

“We didn’t know him too well, but he did good work, earned his keep. But we – in San Antonio, I found a wanted poster with his name right there on it.”

Pat feels Brian’s fingers flex where they’re curled against his chest. “And what was he wanted for?” Pat sighs, lets his nails stroke down Brian’s scalp, scraping lightly. He still can’t stand to remember, all the times he’d played a flirt, joked about late nights with pretty ladies, and Pat and Clay had laughed him off, let him wander right along.

“He’d been,” Pat says, and he swallows, tastes bile. “Hurting women, in some of the towns we’d stopped in. Taking advantage of them, you know? And he’d been– He’d been at it for longer than we’d known him, but, when he was with us, too.”

“Oh,” Brian breathes, a sharp curl of horror, disgust, coloring the word. “What happened?” What– What did you do?” There’s an urgency, a fear there, and Pat answers quickly, find that this part comes a little easier, weeks of thinking on it treading a well-worn path down those bloody days in his mind.

“Clay and Nick were a ways out of town – they’d set up camp, I’d stayed behind to buy some things we needed. So I rode out to them, asked Nick what all of it was about. He said it was some nonsense, but he sounded real nervous about it, so I asked him what the hell he meant by that. He said, something to the effect of, even if what they were saying was true, who cared about a little fun anyways.”

Brian huffs a sharp breath through his nose, makes a noise of pure contempt, and Pat takes a dark pleasure in telling him, “Clayton broke his damn nose, and I shot the bastard in the leg when he tried to run.”

“Good.  _ Good.” _

Pat stops a moment, chews on his lip, before he goes on. “Clay… He panicked. Couldn’t get out of his head how many folks might’ve gotten hurt on his watch, didn’t want to show his face in San Antonio again. I said alright, that I’d deal with Nick, that he could ride on south and I’d catch up with him, and he took off. But he’d not waited for me anywhere yet, and I ain’t seen him upset like that before, so I just – worry. That he mighta gone and done something real stupid.”

“Oh,” Brian says again, and then, “What– What happened to him? To Nick?”

Pat scowls, lets his fingers twist tighter in Brian’s hair. “I dragged him right back into the city, dumped him on the sheriff’s doorstep. Stayed to watch him– To see justice served, then took off south.”

“The money,” Brian says, realizing.

“His bounty,” Pat confirms, and waits, for Brian to say what he ought, what Pat’s been telling himself for near on a months now, that he ought to have known, ought to have killed him with his own two hands. That he should be ashamed–

_ God,  _ is he ashamed.

It doesn’t come, though. Brian just fists his hand in Pat’s shirt, hisses, “I’m  _ glad  _ he’s dead. I’m glad you saw him die.”

And Pat, for the first time, lets a certain, strange sort of relief flood him, as he thinks on that morning fully, doesn’t creep around it in flashes and moments. And, with feeling, he says, “So am I.”

* * *

They ride into Paloma after sundown the next day, hungry and weary and filthy, and ready to fall into just about the first bed they see.

Paloma is a place in a perpetual sort of limbo. Somewhere between a town and a city, somewhere between Mexico and the States, it sits half a day’s ride from the border in one direction and the same from Laredo in another. It is, for most, a brief stop on a longer trip, and Pat’s not sure he’s ever seen the same face here twice. It’s alive, despite the time of night, and as they ride through the streets, they pass still-lit windows, open doors. A few folks sitting on a porch creaking under their weight, smoking and chatting in rapid Spanish, another group stumbling out of a bar, clinging to each others’ shoulders and singing at the top of their drunken lungs. There’s a guitar playing somewhere distant, a dog barking off somewhere else. Despite the day-long exhaustion slumping his shoulders, Brian’s turning to every sound, blinking at every light, and Pat watches him watching Paloma, is struck with the sudden urge to say,  _ this is nothing, you’ll love New York.  _

They take their chances on one of the less rowdy joints, leave the horses tied to a hitching post outside and duck in with their bags in hand. There’s a few folks still milling around, a group who haven’t deigned to remove their hats gambling at one table, an older gentleman slumped half-asleep over his glass at another, but the smart-dressed man behind the bar is wiping up, looks to be about ready to close up shop. He hands over a key for a coin, waves them briskly upstairs, agrees to have a bath pulled up for them likely more out of not wanting them to get dust and sweat all over the bedsheets more than anything.

The bedroom makes for tight quarters, and the tub takes it from cozy to cramped, so they’re pressed close, bumping elbows as they start to peel themselves out of their clothes. Their last proper bath was their dip in the river, and they’ve ridden hard since then, and Pat thinks they’ve worked up a decent road sweat, drying tacky on their skin. His hands feel gritty, the whole of him covered in a fine layer of dust like powdered sugar on a fancy cake in a bakery window. He all but pushes Brian into the tub before him, some semblance of manners rearing its head from somewhere deep in his mind.

“Oh,  _ lord,”  _ Brian murmurs as he sinks into the bath, and when Pat glances over at him, he’s got his eyes shut, head tilted back against the rim of the tub, pure bliss on his face. “Patrick, you may have to wake me if I nod off in here,” he says, cracking one eye open and smirking hazily at him. “I swear, I don’t think a bath’s ever felt this good in my life.”

Pat snorts, goes back to tossing their clothes in a basket to send down for washing in the morning. “Don’t you worry, I don’t plan on letting you hog all the hot water. I’ll just climb on in there with you, if it comes to that.” He realizes what he’s said a moment later, quite resolutely does not look back over at Brian, but hears the wolfish grin in his drawl nonetheless.

“Awfully forward of you, Pat Gill, but I have to say, you don’t gotta look for excuses to come on over.”

And, well.  _ Hell.  _ Now he does look, catches Brian’s eyes, and he’s staring right at Pat, languid and half-lidded, water lapping at the soft line of his neck, and he looks shadowed and odd and beautiful in the flickering light of the lamp. Pat stands like a man compelled, crosses the room in a few short strides, leans down and over him and feels himself grin sharp at the way Brian tilts his head back, up, to meet his lips. 

Pat gives himself a scant moment, to indulge himself, to allow himself, and presses because he can, nips and scrapes because he can, lets himself enjoy the soft sounds Brian starts to make into his mouth. He pulls back just a touch, meets Brian’s soft, curling smile with one of his own, and his voice comes rougher than he expected when he says, “I don’t think you want me this close until I’ve washed off, sweetheart.”

Brian huffs, says, “You’d be surprised, Pat Gill.” Pat grins right back down at him, cuffs him lightly on the shoulder, tells him to hurry the hell up and get out before the bath goes cold.

By the time Pat’s as clean as he’ll ever be and the water’s cooled to the point of discomfort, he’s watching Brian fussing by the vanity with some soap and a straight razor, hunched over the filled basin. Pat lazily eyes the line of his back, the lean muscle at his shoulders, his arms, his waist. He looks like he was born to be on the back of a saddle, but of course – Pat’s selfish, likes him close like this, warm and real and within reach, breaths away in the dim lamplight.

He steps over to the vanity with a towel wrapped around his waist, meets Brian’s eyes in the vanity mirror. Brian’s moving the razor in smooth, confident strokes across his cheek, dark stubble falling into the basin. He’d been clean-shaven when Pat had ridden into town, and it had made him look a mite younger than he was, Pat thinks, a touch prettier too, though he can’t deny that the rough of stubble had been fairly charming.

“Not keeping the trail beard then?” He asks, ribbing lightly. “I thought it was quite dashing, myself.”

Brian snorts, rubbing a wet thumb over newly-smooth skin. “Naw, it didn’t suit me that well. Maybe one day I’ll try changing it up – think I could pull off a big ol’ mustache?” He mimes twirling the ends of an invisible mustache, and Pat barks a laugh.

“I think you’ll look like a damn northern dandy, but yeah, I reckon you could pull it off.”

Brian grins, pleased, and ducks down to wash the last of the soap from his cheeks. He glances up and over his shoulder at Pat, gestures to the razor. “Did you want to–?”

Pat shrugs, decides not to mention that most of the time when he shaves it’s in the reflection of a river, usually with one of Clay’s jackknives, that most of the little scars dotting his jaw are most probably shaving nicks. “Maybe I’ll grow mine out, go for an old prospector kinda look.”

Brian laughs at him, bright and delighted, and Pat smiles, privately pleased in the way he’s been every damn time the last few days he’s managed to put that look on Brian’s face, and it’s most likely why he’s so weak when Brian says, “Come on, I’ll do you. Just neaten you up a little, old man.”

Pat finds himself gently herded towards the basin, stood stiff and unsure as Brian works soap into his face, clever fingers scratching through the scruff of his cheeks. At the first touch of the razor to his skin, Pat’s eyes slip shut, losing himself a little as Brian scrapes the blade gently across the line of his jaw, soft pads of his fingertips always following quick after, soothing some nonexistent hurt. His skin feels like the rumbling sky before a storm, crackling, standing on end and  _ waiting _ , every touch of the blade to his cheek, his jaw, his  _ throat,  _ a new lightning strike.

He feels his mouth twist when Brian’s thumb presses, probing, considering, on a patch at his chin where he knows the hair grows in bone white, stark and odd, and he mumbles, “If you’re gonna do it, might as well take the whole thing off.” He’s never liked how boyish he looks when he’s barefaced, but he finds himself strangely uneasy with Brian’s hands inspecting the parts of him he tends not to pay altogether much attention to.

Brian huffs a quiet laugh, and there’s a tease hanging in his voice when he says, “Oh, I don’t know Patrick. I think it’s quite dashing, myself.”

Despite the size of the bed, bigger than Pat’s bedroll by far, they fall asleep curled around each other, Pat by now altogether far too used to the press of Brian against his chest, the soft puff of breath on his neck as Brian settles himself into every crook of Pat he can find. He drifts into a road-weary, dreamless sleep, hand curled at the small of Brian’s back, the newly short bristle of his chin tucked against the top of his head.

* * *

They set off early, the cloudy grey of the dawn dragging Pat into a hazy wakefulness that turns sharp and nervous with the realization that he can finally start his search proper. They’re as far south as they can go without crossing the border; if Clay’s waited anywhere for Pat, it surely  _ must  _ be here.

Brian’s sluggish and yawning as they stumble downstairs to the bar, the length of the ride taking all the more toll on him for the unfamiliarity of it, but he perks up quick enough when the bartender serves them both some coffee strong enough to knock a buffalo flat, perks up some more when they step outside into the bustling streets. There’s a rhythm to city streets around these parts, roads flowing with the rumble of carts and horses and footsteps like the current of a river, a constant murmur of conversation humming through the air, broken by a delighted squeal, a bawdy laugh, an indistinct shout. It all tends to be a bit much for Pat, too much to hear, to see, to follow, and it’s half the reason he edges around the bigger settlements more often than not these days, but Brian’s glinting in the sun like a gold coin, all awe and delight sitting open on his face, and Pat’s struck with a pang of regret that they can’t spend the day wandering, following close at Brian’s heels as he peers in shop windows, pokes and prods at oddities, makes chatter with the folks behind the counters. 

They have business, though, and the insistent twist of nerves in Pat’s stomach won’t let him forget it. They saddle up, and he’s pleased to find that the horses seem to have been tended to, if not with the attentiveness and skill of Simone, then at least to his satisfaction.

“Where to first?” Brian asks, and Pat glances around the street before them, considering.

“Sheriff’s, I reckon. If there’s been any trouble involving him, that’ll be the place to start.”

“You think he might’ve gotten himself in trouble with the law?” Brian says, blinking. “He seemed like a quiet sort, when he rode through town.”

Pat levels Brian a flat look. “You don’t know Clayton Ashley like I do, my friend.”

The sheriff’s office is right in the center of town, hanging off the side of a fairly over-grand structure that Pat presumes to be the town hall. It looks a fair amount older than most of the places around it, crumbling sandy bricks and wrought iron across the windows. Pat and Brian duck inside together, find themselves blinking into a dim room hazy with dust. There’s only a couple cells, both empty; Pat reckons they’re mostly for local idiots who need a night behind bars to sober up, with the more heinous fellows getting carted quickly off to the big jailhouse in Laredo. The only person inside, it seems, is a woman who’s kicked back at one of the desks, the heels of her booths propped up against the old wood.

She’s sharp-dressed, sharp-faced, in a way that reminds him a touch of Simone, and a silver badge shining proudly on her shirt pronounces her to be a Sheriff’s Deputy. Pat quickly tucks his hat to his chest, coughs, says, “Morning, ma’am. Is Sheriff Grant around?” He’s not met the man personally, but he’s well-enough known around these parts, if not for the best of reasons.

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Grant’s out.” There is a resigned weariness to the words that makes Pat think Grant is often out. The woman swings her legs off the desk, stands, offers Pat a hand. “Maybe I can help y’all out, though. Name’s Tara Long, Deputy.”

Pat shakes her hand firmly, replies, “Pat Gill, and this is Brian Gilbert. We’re passing through looking for a friend of mine. This is the last place we’d heard of him heading, so we hoped someone here might’ve seen him, ma’am.”

Deputy Long nods, says, “Alright, boys, who’s your friend?”   
  
“Clayton Ashley, goes by Clay.” Pat waves a hand a little above his head. “About yea high, brown hair, beard. Quiet sort, I don’t know if you’d’ve met him unless he got himself into trouble.”

To his surprise, Long makes an odd face, says sharply, “White horse, east coast accent?”

Pat blinks. “Yes, ma’am.”

She frowns, says, “Yeah, I know who you’re talking about. Been staying in town near around a week now, I think, but he came to see me yesterday evening, about a bounty I had posted. Said he’d take it off my hands.”

Lord, there’s something sour and awful about that, ain’t there, that Pat’s apparently barely missed him, that he might’ve been standing right here as Pat and Brian rode into town last night, but–

“He took a bounty?” Pat echoes, harsh disbelief coloring his voice. “He doesn’t–” Like trouble, like to shoot, has always preferred to hang back at Pat’s shoulder and clean up his mess. But, well. Hanging back was what got them into this mess, not doing a damn thing when they could’ve is the cardinal sin hanging over their heads. Dread drops a heavy stone in his throat. “What bounty did he take?”

Deputy Long tuts absently, opens a drawer and pulls out a yellowed poster, rolls it out on the desk for Pat and Brian to examine. The portrait shows a jovial, grinning man, ridiculous moustache and something entirely off-kilter behind his eyes.

“Brennan Lee Mulligan,” Long tells them, brisk, professional. “Calls himself  _ the Duke,  _ apparently. He’s a highwayman of sorts, likes to menace folks on the road from here to Laredo, but he’s been getting bolder lately, rode into town and held up a general store last week. Two people ended up dead when he decided to shoot his way out.”

“Shit,” Pat hisses, eyes fixed on the poster, mind fixed on Clay, bleeding out alone in the desert somewhere. He nearly starts when Brian presses suddenly against his side, eyes on the poster. “Where would Clayton have gone looking for him?”

Long gives a half-shrug. “Mulligan’s holed up in some shack off the road three or so miles east of here, just off the main road. Ashley said he’d ride out that way with morning, so if I was pressed for an answer.”

Pat turns abruptly, hardly remembers a “thank you, ma’am,” as he’s out the door, Brian close at his heels.

“You should go back to the room,” Pat tells him as he swings up onto Charlie. “If Mulligan’s half as bad as his bounty says he is, this won’t be safe.”

Brian fixes him with a stubborn sort of glare from the ground, hands on his hips. “I’m coming with you, Patrick.”

“It’s not–”

“Safe? I know. I ain’t just along for the fun of this whole trip, Pat, I’m not going to let you ride off into this by yourself.” Brian hauls himself up onto Zuko, takes off at a canter towards the road eastwards out of town, leaving Pat with very little choice but to follow close behind.

They ride hard, probably harder than they should considering the horses won’t be rested from the last few days, but Pat’s in a near-on panic by this point, sure more than anything that he’s riding towards a corpse, that if he’d just pushed a little faster, caught Clay up a little earlier, he could’ve stopped him signing up to dig his own damn grave. Brian’s breathing heavy, bearing down hard on his mustang, face twisted in a frantic worry that echoes Pat’s, and he’s struck with a pang of guilt, that he’s dragging the kid into trouble with him, but worse, that Pat’s glad to have him, tucked close to his side like he’s meant to be there.

Pat doesn’t pray anymore, hasn’t stepped foot in a church in probably two decades now, but he thanks something, someone,  _ anyone,  _ that it’s not a massacre they ride into, but a standoff.

It happens in a moment, too quick for Pat to blink, riding up on the familiar sight of Clay on his filly, gun pointed steady at a man across the way who’s aiming right back at him, and even with the bandana pulled up over his nose Pat can tell it’s not Mulligan, and the man’s eyes flick to Pat, confusion and fear and the distraction is enough, his attention and his gun wavering for just long enough for Clayton to take his shot. He goes down off his horse with a shout, groans into the dirt, goes quiet, dead or knocked out or just too smart to keep noisemaking, Pat doesn’t know, doesn’t care, is already getting his feet on the ground, making for Clay, and they’ve never been the most demonstrative of men but Pat’s got his arms around Clay in a heartbeat, and hell, he’s missed his  _ voice,  _ soft and calm even as he’s struck dumb, murmuring,  _ “Pat?”  _ into his hair. He’s got hands fisted tight in Pat’s jacket, moves to grip his forearms as he pulls back to get a look at his face.

“What – Where the hell did you come from? What are you  _ doing  _ here?”

Pat grins wryly, says, “Tracking your ass down before you get yourself killed, what else?” He nods towards the idiot lying in the road, points out, “That’s not Mulligan.”

Clay drops his hands to his own hips, but gets fidgety a moment later, scrubs a nervous hand over his mouth. “No. One of the goons that helped him rob a store in town. Don’t know where precisely Mulligan’s holed up.”

They’re both full of questions, Pat can tell, Clayton just about brimming with confusion at the whole ordeal, Pat just about ready to knock him upside the head for thinking this was even halfway to a good idea, but Brian’s dismounted and padded up alongside them, and Clay catches proper sight of him for the first time, blinks in recognition. “You’re from the McElroys’ town. The kid who wrangles horses.” He seems to remember himself a moment later, polite in a natural, quiet sort of way that Pat’s never managed, and he sticks out a hand. “Clayton Ashley. I see you’ve, uh, met Patrick.” There’s about ten questions and an accusation hidden in there, and Pat’ll rightfully have to answer for every single one of them, he’s sure.

Brian reaches out and takes Clay’s hand, smiles warmly. “Brian David Gilbert, professional horse wrangler, at your service. Good to finally meet you properly, friend. You’re not an easy man to fi–”

“Afternoon, gentlemen. Now, everyone just stay calm.”

The voice is in Pat’s ear, and he hears it a scant second before he feels the ice of a blade at his throat. It’s theatrical, deep, a voice to match the face on the poster, and Pat doesn’t need to try and turn in the grip he’s now in, doesn’t even need to see the panic creeping across Clay and Brian’s faces to know that it’s Mulligan holding the knife. Must’ve crept up behind the horses, waited until they were all distracted with each other, grabbed the man standing just on the outskirts, like a coyote latching onto a calf that’s lagged behind the herd.

“Alright, Mulligan,” Clay says, steady, careful,  _ God  _ Pat’s missed him, “Don’t do anything hasty.”

Mulligan laughs, loud and grating in Pat’s ear, and his arm tightens around Pat’s neck, makes him wince. “Oh, my friends, I never do anything in haste. Believe me, I have thought this through very well indeed.” He’s too well-spoken for Pat’s taste, and he knows the type, the sharp-dressed east coast buffoons who see the desert as their hunting ground, some land of peasants and quaint little towns free for the conquering. “Now you, good sir, are going to drop your gun and kick it away,” he says to Clayton, and then, to Brian, “and  _ you  _ are going to stay still and keep your hands where I can see them, or it’s your dear friend’s neck on the line.”

Pat doesn’t want to look at Brian, hates with a passion the fear, the panic plain on his face as he slowly raises his splayed hands up and out, but he tries to catch his eyes, needs to tell him to run, to get on his mustang and disappear, damn Pat’s life because it’s already forfeit but Brian and Clay can still get gone if they would just  _ move.  _

Clay, damn him and his heart, slowly, carefully lowers his gun to his feet, gingerly kicks it out of reach, hands mimicking Brian’s, open and raised.

“Good, very good, thank you, gentlemen,” Mulligan says, slick as grease, and Pat shudders, fingers twitching, but there’s nothing he can  _ do  _ with the sharp of the blade pressed to his throat hard enough to split skin. Pat feels Mulligan shift, keeping the knife in place but changing the slant of his body, turned now towards the horses.

“Now, I think me and your – what was it, Patrick? I think Patrick and I are going to go for a little ride together, just so I can be sure that the two of you don’t get any smart ideas about following me and, ah, what’s the phrase, ‘bring me to justice’? And perhaps in a few hundred miles I’ll let dear Patrick off nice and safe, and we can all go our separate ways.”

It’s a lie, of course. A pretty one, but a lie nonetheless. Pat gets on a horse with this bastard, and he’ll end up with his throat slit in the middle of the desert, surer than the sunrise. But it’s the only way he can see out of this with Brian and Clay safe, so it’s the only option he really has.

“Yes, fine,” he chokes out against the blade on his throat. “I’ll go, no trouble, just don’t  _ touch  _ them.”

Clayton makes a broken, guttural noise, face crumbling, and Brian takes a half-step forward, says,  _ “No.”  _

“Don’t move,” Mulligan warns, tone a joke but the threat of it far too real for Pat’s liking.

“Please,” Brian says, and his voice is thick, sounds close to tears. Pat can’t quite stand to look at him, finds his eyes locked on the cracked dirt at his feet. “If you let him go, we won’t follow you, I swear, please–”

Mulligan snorts. “Ah, but why would I take your word when I can simply take your friend and be far more certain?”

“We can give you–” Brian starts, cuts himself off with a sharp breath. Pat thinks,  _ shit, Lord, just stop talking Bri, let the man take me, get it all over with.  _ Feels dread curl heavy in his chest when Mulligan’s voice turns up with interest. “Oh? What can you give me, in return for the release of your friend?”

Brian takes a steeling breath, is no more steady for it when he calls across the distance between them. “Pat’s a bounty hunter. He just collected the bounty for a man who was wanted across half of Texas, more than enough gold to get you settled nice far away from here. And I’ll – I’ll give it to you, just if you let him  _ go.”  _

Pat looks up quick enough that he presses himself further into the blade, bites his tongue to keep the wince off his face when he feels the sting of a cut, the sticky-hot slick of fresh blood.  _ “No,”  _ he says, sharp. “Brian, no.” All this ends with is all three of them in shallow graves, and now Mulligan knows there’s  _ money  _ involved.

Brian ignores him, staring wet and unblinking over Pat’s shoulder. “It’s in his saddlebag. Just let me get it, and this can all be over. Please.”

Pat feels Mulligan shift, hum, and eventually nod. “Alright, then. The money for the safe release of your friend. But I want to see the gold first.”

Brian keeps his hands raised as he walks in slow, careful steps towards Charlie, and all Pat can do is watch him in pure dismay, halfway to tears himself, wanting to shout, struggle, twist and end things all himself before Brian can reach his hands into–

The wrong saddlebag.

And in a split second, Pat thinks–

_ of course Mulligan’s the type who can’t resist the chance to make a little extra money out of a venture, and– _

_ Brian’s a pretty enough crier to sell it and– _

_ Pat is hopelessly, desperately in love– _

And the gunshot is ringing in his ear, the arm around his neck abruptly gone, and he’s lurching forward, coughing and staggering and trying to think straight, feels a hand tugging at his arm and finds himself leaning against Clayton, steadying himself until the world slowly straightens itself out before him. The first thing he hears beyond the ringing, echoing silence of gunfire is Mulligan’s shouting. He turns to look, sees that Mulligan’s rolling on the ground squalling and sobbing, clutching at the meat of his shoulder with glistening red streaming from between his fingers. Turns a little more, steadier on his feet now, sees Brian. 

His chest is heaving, arms shaking with the weight of Pat’s revolver in his hands, still leveled at Mulligan on the ground. Doesn’t falter until Clay’s retrieved his own gun and Mulligan’s knife besides, has it trained steadily at Mulligan’s head, and finally, {at slowly lowers the gun, meets Pat’s eyes, gives him a watery, adrenaline-shaky smile.

Pat’s at him in seconds, cupping his face, and Brian’s with him, grinning wet against his lips, laughing into his mouth, and there’s a frantic hysteria to the kiss, but Pat doesn’t give a damn, it’s perfect–  _ “Perfect,”  _ he murmurs between breaths, kissing soft and brief along Brian’s cheeks, his nose, his jaw, to feel him laugh at the attention. “Perfect shot, you are  _ perfect.”  _

Brian slumps against him suddenly, the gun hanging from one limp hand and the other fisting in Pat’s jacket. Pat wraps an arm around him, tucks him tight to his chest. Into the crook of Pat’s shoulder, Brian murmurs, “Pat?”

“Yeah, Bri.”

“I want to go home.”   


And Pat looks up over Brian’s shoulder, meets Clay’s eyes, and feels an exhaustion wash over him, not just the cresting wave of his near-death, but the weight he’s carried since San Antonio falling finally from his shoulders after the last long, awful month. Clay’s half-smiling at him, easy and  _ missed you, Gill  _ and  _ let’s get the hell out of here with your boy  _ all at once, and Pat says, “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go home.”

* * *

Brian’s wandered off out of camp to ‘take care of business’ when Pat crouches beside Clay, pokes at the fire with a stick from their woodpile.

He’d waved Brian off as he went, smiled when he saw he was still wearing that new jacket, thick dark hide and fur-lined at the collar and a damn-sight better than the canvas piece he’d set out in–

(“It’s nice,” he’d said, fidgeting with the buttons, glancing at himself in the shop mirror. He had been quite blatantly in love with it. “But it’s… a lot of money. I can’t ask y’all to buy–”

“You shot Mulligan,” Clayton had said, earnest and intense. “His bounty is yours. You can spend it on what you like.”

And Pat had met his eyes in the mirror, grinned at him, dropped a nice, dark felt hat on his head, broad-rimmed and soft where it rested low on his forehead. “And a new coat demands a new hat,” he’d said, incredibly seriously, and Brian had laughed admiring the look of himself in the handsome pieces.)

–He’s hardly taken either of them off since.

Pat bumps Clay’s shoulder with his, smiles when he feels Clay pushing lightly back.

“Ashley,” he says softly, “What the hell were you doing, going after Mulligan?”

Clay goes very still beside him. They’ve not talked much about this, since they dragged Mulligan kicking and screaming and bleeding to Deputy Long, and Pat’s been wary of bringing it up around Brian, who’s been a touch shaky since he pulled the trigger on the man, who doesn’t know Clay altogether well besides.

Clay takes a breath, says, “How big was Nick’s bounty?”

From another man it might sound like a change of subject, but Pat knows Clay, knows him to be a circumspect, circular man, knows that on occasion, he can get a little turned around before he gets back to talking about a particular thing. So Pat shakes his head, says, “Big enough. Too big. It was a few different sheriffs, wanted him.”

“A few different sheriffs,” Clay echoes. “A few different– How did we not  _ know?”  _

Pat frowns, blinks into the fire. “He lied to us, you know that. Smiled and lied and smooth-talked his way out of every odd thing he ever did.”

Clay sucks in a sharp breath. “I should’ve–” He bites off his own words, turns his face from Pat.

Pat looks at him proper now, at the guilt bowing the line of his shoulders, hunched into his jacket. “Wait, I– Is  _ that  _ what this was? You run off into your own grave as  _ penance?  _ What, you catch some other bastard or die trying?” His voice is climbing, shouting now, but he doesn’t give a damn, is almost shaking with the idea that as one final act of ill, Nick had damn near taken Clay from him too.

“What was I supposed to  _ do?”  _ Clay shouts right back, desperate, more wretched than Pat’s ever seen him, and Pat so desperately does not want to see his friend cry, does not want to cry with him.

“Wait for me!” He hisses. “In Henrietta, or the McElroys’, or– Anywhere, you oughta have waited for me, so we could deal with all of this together, put it to rest. Go home.” He scrubs a hand across his face. “God, I’m tired, Clay. Ain’t you tired?”

Clay nods, says, voice thick, “Yeah, Pat, I’m pretty damn tired.”

Pat hears footsteps behind them, deliberately loud, Brian, tactful and clever, giving them a chance to compose themselves. Pat rubs a quick hand across his eyes and turns to Clay, an idea that’s been sitting quiet in the back of his mind suddenly speaking its piece. “You know,” he says, slow, “that bounty really was a lot of money. Enough to settle down on some land, build a nice little house.”

Clay eyes him oddly, then smiles, real crooked, delighted in a way he used to get years and years ago when Pat cooked up an idea that’d get them into a hell of a lot of trouble. “Yeah? Alright.” Then, he turns, calls over his shoulder, “Brian?”

“Yeah?” Brian glances up from his spot on Pat’s bedroll, swallowing his mouthful of jerky. “What can I do ya for, Clayton?”

“Do you know if there’s any plots for sale roundabouts your town?”

Pat and Brian make noise at the same time, a startle that turns quick into delight. “Yeah,” Brian says, “I think there’s a few around that Sheriff McElroy might be willing to part with.”

Clay nods, real thoughtful-like, and says, “Big enough for a good size corral, would you reckon?”

Pat blinks at Clay, fails to follow. Always circles, with him. “Clay, what are we needing a corral for, exactly?”

Clay stands slowly, hands braced on his knees. “Well,” he says, “I reckon if Brian’ll be living with us any length of time, he’ll need somewhere to wrangle those horses of his.” He sighs, tucks his revolver into the holster at his belt. “I’ll take first watch, you two get some rest.” He wanders off towards the edge of camp, without seeming to notice that he’s left Pat and Brian both gawping at his back.

Pat finds his wits first, goes and sits himself down beside Brian on the bedroll. Brian looks at him, slow and uncertain, and says, “Really? I mean,  _ really?”  _

Pat says, “Yeah, really,” smiles when Brian kisses him, soft and sure, ignores the fact that Clayton is likely snorting to himself, will call Pat an old sap for the rest of their damn lives.

* * *

Sheriff McElroy is, of course, livid.

He’s red faced and sputtering when they ride into town midmorning, can’t seem to decide whether to be angrier at Brian or Pat, makes a few incoherent sounds with the words “worried  _ sick”  _ muttered somewhere between. Brian, for his part, is being fussed over by about half the damn town, Dr. McElroy poking and prodding at him, and a woman Pat can only take for his mother pulling him close to her, and Pat just tries not to catch much attention, quietly accepts his due scolding from the man of the law.

“I am sorry for all the trouble, sir,” Pat says genuinely, has been worried down to the bone with guilt over all this for most of the last day’s ride, just about driving Brian insane with all his moping.

A jovial, red-cheeked man with the McElroys’ smile and spectacles that glint as he peers over them strolls over, claps Justin on the shoulder. “Aw, come on, Justin, leave the kids alone. You’re acting like I didn’t catch you and Syd trying to elope every other night before Tommy came around.”   


All at once, the fight goes out of Justin, and he sighs deep, puts his face in his hands. “No, I know, Dad. God himself coulda tried to strike that kid down and he’da still found a way to tag along with you, if he was real stubborn about it. I just – Thanks for bringing him back in one piece, Gill.”

Pat snorts, says, “Believe me, he can take care of himself.”

“You talking badly about me behind my back, Gill?” Brian calls, and Pat turns to see him and a sheepish Clayton being frog-marched towards the sheriff by Dr. McElroy, one boy in each hand.

“You know,” She says, ostensibly to Justin, but in actuality to the gathered crowd at large, “that these three are planning on buying a plot out here and moving in?”

Quite abruptly, Pat finds himself with a cheerful Clint McElroy at his side, a paternal arm around his shoulders. “You boys are planning on staying in town?” he says, delighted. “Well, why didn’t you say so! I’ll talk to Trav about your house first thing tomorrow. Will y’all be wanting one bedroom, two, or three?”

* * *

Brian’s mother is an aggressively friendly woman, who inexplicably is not angry at Pat for her youngest child disappearing in the dead of night, and in fact is rather insistent that he and Clayton are staying in her home, rather than renting out a room from Jenna. They find themselves all but tied to chairs at a dinner table, being served far better food than Pat’s had in a while. Being browbeaten into being cared for, Pat is sensing, may be something he has to get used to, entreating with the Gilberts.

Laura Gilbert is precisely as delightful as Brian’s stories painted her, jokes and snipes with Pat and Brian easily, even seems to charm Clay, who’s gone inwards and demure with all the noise and attention. Jonah regards them with all of the scrutiny that they deserve, keeps a healthy suspicion that Pat respects deeply, but is welcoming nonetheless, helps Clayton to get set up in the spare bedroom, carries Pat’s bags out to a little casitas out behind the house that Pat hadn’t seen when he’d dropped Brian off at the front porch before.

It’s not until far later, well after the table’s been cleared and their stories have been told and retold with dramatic embellishments and Clayton’s managed to yawn his way into an early night, that Pat considers that him alone staying in the casitas may not have been a coincidence. Brian lets himself in as Pat’s washing up in the basin, closing the door quietly behind him. Pat meets his eyes, smiles, and that seems all the invitation Brian needs to step further into the room, into Pat’s space. Pat puts an arm around his waist as soon as he’s in reach, grins as he finds himself soundly kissed. Brian’s in sleep clothes, soft and loose, and Pat sneaks fingers under his shirt, drags his nails along Brian’s ribs, trails down the curve of his back to the waist of his trousers, lets his fingers rest there, asking. Brian makes a small sound into his mouth, presses close to Pat, breaks to murmur against the corner of his mouth, “I brought, if you want–” and it’s then that Pat notices the small tin in one of Brian’s hands, and he takes it to inspect, finds it to be gun oil, soft and creamy white, wax and lanolin and a scent of some kind that reminds Pat of a perfume dabbed behind a pretty lady’s ears.

He is all of a sudden burning, and he presses his forehead to Brian’s, manages to say, “Oh?”

There’s a smile to Brian’s voice, but nerves too, and he says, half-joking, “Since you can get me in a proper bed, and all.”

Lord, Pat must've been a damn saint in a past life, or a sinner of the worst sort. He kisses Brian like a man possessed, touches every inch of skin he can reach, makes a satisfied noise that comes out a little like a growl when Brian pulls back to tug his shirt over his head and starts making quick work of Pat’s own buttons.

Brian pulls them in quick steps to the bed, and Pat lets himself be pushed down onto it, feels his mouth working uselessly when Brian straddles him, the most beautiful man he’s ever seen, hair shining gold in the lamplight, flushed right down to his stomach and tenting the soft, thin fabric of his trousers.

“God,” Pat says, and he might be asking for help, might be giving thanks, he’ll decide later.  _ “God.” _

Brian grins, but he goes a little redder around the cheeks, shifts his hips like he’s looking for purchase. “Gee, Pat,” he says, shaky enough to give him away, “You know how to make a guy feel good.”

“I’d sure like to make you feel good,” Pat says, barefaced honesty that’s all he can manage in the face of Brian sat atop him, rolling his hips just enough to make Pat  _ feel  _ it.

Brian lets Pat pull him down to him, says low, “Yeah?”

“Please,” Pat says, rubbing up against him, pressing fingertips hard into Brian’s hips. “I want to suck you off.”

Brian rocks forward into him, makes a noise deep in his throat. “Lord, yes,  _ please,”  _ he says, lets Pat roll him over so he’s laying back against the pillows, staring down at Pat openmouthed as he noses along the hard line of him in his trousers.

“Have you ever–” Brian starts to ask, falters as Pat pulls away. 

“With a man?” Pat finishes. “Yes. Have you?”

“Yes. Lord,  _ please–”  _ Pat mouths at Brian through the thin fabric, near-grins when he lets out a small, broken moan. Pat wants to make him do that again, he thinks, wants to spend an entire night pressing Brian down into his bed sheets and pulling him slowly apart, but–

Well, he’s selfish, and they’ve been riding hard for the last week, near enough, and it feels like they’ve waited quite long enough for this, and there will be time enough later, besides.

Pat pulls Brian out of his waistband, strokes a thumb over the flushed pink head of his cock before taking it gently into his mouth, bracing a hand on Brian’s thigh.

One of Brian’s hands finds his hair, fingers threading loosely but not quite tugging, and when Pat looks up Brian’s head is thrown back, eyes half-lidded and unseeing, chest heaving. “Please,” he says again, and Pat’s not sure he’ll ever figure out how to say no to him, obliges by ducking his head, taking more and more of Brian into his mouth. He’s done this before, yes, but lord, it’s been a while, and he’d near forgotten the weight of a cock sitting heavy in his mouth, the heat of it pressed to his tongue, and he moves one hand down between his legs to grind a palm against his own cock, his groan muffled around Brian.

It doesn’t take long to bring Brian to the edge when he properly starts to put his back into it, pressing the flat of his tongue to the underside of his cock and wrapping fingers around the shaft, or bobbing his head down, taking him as far as he can go and  _ sucking,  _ and soon enough Brian’s fingers are tightening in his hair, tugging sharply, his voice uneven and halfway to a moan when he warns, “Patrick, Pat,  _ Pat–”  _

Brian spills hot into Pat’s mouth, and Pat holds him down by the hips until he’s gone soft on Pat’s tongue, pushing up with aborted little thrusts and making soft, keening, half-hurting noises. Pat pulls off and sits back, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

Brian sits up to meet him, trousers tangled around his knees, kisses him despite the taste that must be on Pat’s tongue. His hands drift down Pat’s sides, and he presses a palm to his cock, murmurs,  _ “oh,”  _ when Pat moans, hips rocking into Brian’s hand of their own accord. “You’re still,” Brian says, and Pat’s quick to say, “It’s alright,” but Brian shakes his head.

“Want you to fuck me,” Brian says, and then, “please,” because he’s far more of a gentleman than Pat will ever be, and all Pat can do is say, “Yes, God,  _ yes,”  _ kick himself out of his trousers while Brian does the same. Brian makes himself comfortable astride Pat’s hips again, pushed up on his knees, and leans over for the gun oil, laying forgotten on the other pillow. He flicks the tin open, coats two fingers, reaches behind himself with his eyes screwed shut. Pat watches, hands splayed wide on Brian’s thighs, as he moves his fingers in shallow thrusts, confident as he was when he had the straight razor at his jaw, and his mouth goes dry as he imagines Brian doing this alone, in his bed at night, moving careful, probing fingers as he tries to keep quiet, keep from waking the household. Imagines him with another man, one of the many strangers passing through that Brian’s taken stories from, lying back in a bedroom above the bar while a hazy, shadow-faced stranger curls thick fingers inside him.

“Can I,” Pat starts, rough, already fumbling for the tin, and Brian says, “Yes,  _ yes,”  _ when Pat coats a finger in the slick cream, presses it in alongside Brian’s own. Christ, he’s hot, and tight, and soft and yielding and Pat is a little offput by the fact that not a single one of the idiotic things he and Clay managed to get themselves into killed him, but this almost certainly will, Brian pushing down on the fingers inside him in slow, rolling thrusts, cock stiffening to attention and head thrown back.

“Okay, I’m alright, I’m ready,” Brian breathes, pulls out his fingers, and Pat says, “Are you sure-?” but Brian’s already slicking Pat’s cock up with one hand, lifting his hips to line them up, and in slow, excruciating inches, he slides home.

Brian’s panting softly by the time he’s fully seated, eyes closed and shifting himself tentatively, and Pat is so suddenly taken with the look of sheer concentration on his face that he finds himself pressing soft, smiling kisses to Brian’s mouth, his jaw, the bridge of his nose, and Brian laughs softly at him, opens his eyes to look at him, and pushes forward to kiss him properly, teeth and tongue and fingertips on his shoulders, and then he’s–

lifting himself up in cautious inches, hands braced on Pat’s shoulders, and they both groan when he drops himself back down, and Pat can’t make himself hold still any longer, thrusts up into Brian and presses messy kisses down his neck, nipping at whatever he can reach and then they’re–

moving, Brian setting a quick pace that Pat eagerly matches, one hand in Brian’s hair and the other wrapped around his cock, stroking him in time with each thrust, and Brian comes with a broken-off moan, strung out between Pat’s fingers and his cock. He pulls off of Pat, rolls over onto his back and pulls Pat until he’s braced over him, and Pat thinks vaguely that he’s had this daydream before, Brian wrecked and open underneath him, and wraps a hand around his own cock to bring himself off, finds himself stopped by Brian.

“No, in me,” he says, fingers curled around Pat’s wrist.

Pat’s breath hitches, and he falters, hesitates, but Brian says, “Come on, I can take it, don’t you dare stop, Pat Gill, or I’ll –  _ oh,”  _ because that's about all the invitation Pat needs to push back inside, easy now with Brian loose and pliant under him, and with Brian’s fingernails scraping down his back, heels digging in, pulling him closer, Pat starts to move again, feels like he’s been at the edge of it for seconds and years when he finally reaches it, spilling inside of Brian and panting heavy against his temple, Brian’s lips pressed to his jaw.

* * *

Pat once more silently thanks Jonah for his foresight as he cleans them up, using a washcloth soaked with water from the basin to gently wipe the streaks of slick from Brian’s oversensitive skin. The thought of creeping through a sleeping house to a washroom in the state he’s in make him shudder.

He doesn’t bother with clothes, just blows out the lamp and climbs into bed with Brian, pulling the heavy wool covers over them and pressing himself along the line of Brian’s back, curling an arm around his chest. Brian presses back against him, warm and heavy and drowsy in a way Pat’s getting to know well. He turns in Pat’s arms, presses a kiss to his jaw, makes a noise at the scratch of Pat’s stubble on his lips. “Think we can get a dog on the land?” he asks, voice hazy, meandering.

“Clay loves dogs,” Pat mumbles, half to sleep already. “He’ll probably want us to get a whole pack. Never could before, we weren’t in the same place long enough.” They’re quiet a moment, lazy in the half-light. Eventually, Pat adds, “We’ll have to find someone to look after them when we visit New York, I guess.”

Brian takes the arm Pat’s got wrapped around him, laces their fingers together, brings Pat’s hand to his mouth to brush his lips across the knuckles. “We’ll manage,” he says, sounding endlessly pleased, endlessly sure, and Pat’s still charmed near stupid with it. “Goodnight, Pat.”

The moon hangs full and heavy over the desert, light spilling in under the thin curtain of the little window. It casts the room in an odd light, dim and strange, somehow caught out of time, like the two of them could lay here just about forever and nobody but the sky might notice. He closes his eyes, lets himself drift. “Goodnight, Brian.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy hogmanay! hope the turn of the decade went well for everyone; for my part, i spent it furiously writing about cowboys and texting sappy shit to my partner, as god intended. time for a good long post-fic nap.


End file.
